Ariel Djanikian is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and holds and MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband and daughter.
“As Orwell knew, the best dystopian fiction is close enough to
reality to make it scarily believable. . . . It's the same way in
Ariel Djanikian's thrilling debut The Office of Mercy. . . . At its
heart, The Office of Mercy is a thriller. . . . Scary and
realistic. . . Fast-paced. . . Exciting to read. . . . With
Natasha, Djanikian has crafted a hero who is memorable precisely
because of her imperfections. . . . It's fascinating, and at times
heartbreaking, to witness her incremental growth as she begins to
question everything she's been taught. It takes a blend of
intelligence and compassion to pull off that kind of convincing
character arc, but it also takes great authorial skill. . . . The
Office of Mercy is an indisputable page turner with a surprising
ending — and crafting prose. . . . The stunning, willfully
oblivious cruelty of America-Five is chilling because of its
plausibility — you don't have to look past our own history for
examples of mass slaughter, eugenics and euphemized government
propaganda. It's hard to miss the echoes of Orwell in Djanikian's
dark vision of both the past and the future.”
—Michael Schaub, npr.org
“ A cool and compelling dystopian bildungsroman from a debut author
we imagine we’ll be hearing a lot more from.”
—Emily Temple, Flavorwire
“A remarkable coming-of-age dystopian novel, fast-paced and thought
provoking throughout.”
—Largehearted Boy
“[A] horrifically brutal, compelling debut. . . . A grim muse on a
future with shades of The Hunger Games, Djanikian’s first offering
should attract readers voracious for this popular subgenre.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“The title of Ariel Djanikian’s first book, The Office of Mercy, is
as disturbing as it is ironically fitting. Using a fresh,
effortless descriptive style, Djanikian projects us into a
futuristic world wiped clean by a man-made devastation called the
Storm. . . . Djanikian puts us through the ethical ringer. . . .
Which isn’t to say there’s not also a good deal of juice here,
too--Natasha totally bust an actual move on her superior, as
opposed to resorting to passive cybering.”
—Whitney Dwire, Bust magazine
“Fascinating. . . . Djanikian’s fictitious world
combines both the horrifying consequences of ethnic cleansing with
the bright new hope of how much one person can do to change
history. Both believable and chilling, this tale transports readers
to a futuristic utopic life where good and evil mingle with equal
opportunity and are often indistinguishable to the characters. This
intriguing slice of future drama ends much too soon, and will leave
readers begging for a sequel, if not a series.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“[Djanikian] truly shines by plunging her characters into
existential crises as they question and finally confront the
foundations on which their lives are built. Fans of sci-fi and
speculative fiction will enjoy this adventurous exploration of
human nature.”
—Tobias Mutter, Shelf Awareness for Readers
“Intriguing premise. . . . In this thoughtful debut, Djanikian
explores the disconnect between a utopian vision and its dystopian
implementation. . . . Natasha Wiley, a young citizen assigned to
the Office of Mercy, knows empathy will only get in the way of her
necessary work, but when she comes into close contact with one of
the tribes, her reaction sets off world-changing events.”
—Publishers Weekly “If you think a future world without
suffering would be a good thing, Ariel Djanikian will convince you
to reconsider in her impressive debut The Office of Mercy.
Gripping, well-plotted, and boasting a fascinating setting, this
utterly engrossing tale is thoughtful and surprising. Djanikian's
adroit writing turns the elements of the dystopian novel on their
head, and the central character’s struggles in America-Five were,
by turns, both starkly foreign and hauntingly familiar.”
—Deborah Harkness, New York Times bestselling author of A Discovery
of Witches and Shadow of Night
“I gulped this startlingly smart debut down, unable to stop before
I found out what happened to brave Natasha and her America-Five
compatriots.”
—Emma Straub, author of Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures“The Office
of Mercy confronts us with a portrait of a smoothly heartless world
that’s viscerally imagined, increasingly harrowing, and beautifully
moving. As we continue to squander or destroy the finite resources
our planet has remaining, and the gap between the elite and the
trampled continues to widen, the heartbreaking and chilling vision
that Ariel Djanikian outlines starts to seem like our most—if not
our only— plausible future.”
—Jim Shepard, author of Like You’d Understand, Anyway “Ariel
Djanikian has written a novel of strange and stirring passions. Her
dystopia is familiar to us because it is the land of our
nightmares, our myths, and histories—yet Djanikian infuses it with
startling novelty. The writing is both languidly sensual and
suspenseful. This novel ushers in an important new voice.”
—Laura Kasischke, author of In a Perfect World “An
action-packed novel of fascinating ideas set in a fully-imagined
world that is both alluring and terrifying. Serious, entertaining,
and seriously entertaining.”
—Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional
Universe
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