HARI KUNZRU is the author of five previous novels: White Tears, The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, and Gods Without Men. His work has been translated into twenty-one languages, and his short stories and journalism have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and The New Yorker. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Public Library, and the American Academy in Berlin. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
ONE OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES' "20 READS BOOK PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT
THIS YEAR"
ONE OF NPR's BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
ONE OF THE A.V. CLUB'S 15 FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
“Haunting and timely . . . Kunzru is not the first to write about
the free-floating dread and creeping paranoia brought on by the
accelerated technologies and fluid social structures of modern
life, but his innovation lies in having grafted a taut
psychological thriller onto an old-fashioned systems novel of the
sort Don DeLillo or Thomas Pynchon used to write. The effect is
dizzying, and also delightful, as he riffs on everything from the
early-nineteenth-century German writer Heinrich von Kleist to
surveillance culture to the Counter-Enlightenment to the history of
schnitzel, while somehow still clocking in at under three hundred
pages.”
—Jenny Offill, The New York Review of Books
“An absorbing parable of contemporary paranoia . . . Mr.
Kunzru has always paired his sharp, elegant prose with visions of
pandemonium . . . Current events, he suggests, illustrate the
madness of the world more effectively than any literary
device.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“If there is a lasting value to Red Pill, it is in its clever
and thoughtful critique of the urge of many creative and
purportedly progressive people to make themselves heroes—or at the
very least historical subjects—at a moment in which they clearly
have so little agency or role to play . . . Red Pill is
perhaps Kunzru’s most overtly political novel. It not only engages
the world of electoral politics but also offers an unsparing study
of the flaccid state of 21st century liberalism and the
intellectuals and creative types who hold on to its false promise
of order and reason.”
—Kevin Lozano, The Nation
“Just finished reading Red Pill by Hari Kunzru. Astonishing,
absorbing, terrifying. Immensely good."
—Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy
“Dream-like, all-consuming . . . You want to read Hari
Kunzru’s Red Pill to understand the madness of the past
few years."
—Nicholas Cannariato, NPR
“Kunzru finds the humor and humanity in it all, but even as the
story spirals into well-earned hysteria, he never downplays the
severity of the mental derangement unfolding on both sides of the
aisle in a post-truth era, nor the ways each can intersect in the
realm of conspiracy.”
—Randall Colburn, The A.V. Club
“Hari Kunzru’s new book Red Pill is the Gen X
Midlife-Crisis Novel in its purest form . . . A funny and
suspenseful novel, dense with ideas, deliciously plotted, and
generous with its satirical acid.”
—Christian Lorentzen, Bookforum
“Deeply intelligent and artfully constructed . . . Kunzru devotes a
lengthy — and riveting — section of the book to Monika’s story,
vividly evoking the scruffy flats and sordid betrayals of East
Berlin in the mid-1980s . . . For some writers, the gently comic
potential of [Red Pill’s] set-up would be enough. But Kunzru is too
ambitious to be satisfied by academic farce.”
—Jonathan Derbyshire, Financial Times
“Razor-sharp . . . as an allegory about how well-meaning liberals
have been blindsided by pseudo-intellectual bigots with substantial
platforms, it’s bleak but compelling . . . ‘Kafkaesque’ is an
overused term, but it’s an apt one for this dark tale of fear and
injustice.”
—Kirkus (starred)
“Dazzling . . . Kunzru has created a complex, challenging, and bold
story about a world gone amok. . ."
—Booklist (starred)
“Powerful . . . Kunzru does an excellent job of layering the
atmosphere with fear and disquietude at every turning point. This
nightmarish allegory leaves the reader with much to chew on about
literature’s role in the battleground of ideas.”
—Publishers Weekly
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