Description
About the Author
Benjamin Labatut is a Chilean author born in the Netherlands in 1980. He was raised in The Hague before settling in Chile, where he lives and works. His book When We Cease to Understand the World has been translated into over thirty languages: it was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, selected for Barack Obama's Summer Reading List and named a Guardian, New York Times and New Statesman Book of the Year. The MANIAC is Labatut's first book written in English. Labatut lives with his family in Santiago, Chile.
Reviews
'Monstrously good... Reads like a dark foundation myth about modern technology but told with the pace of a thriller' - Mark Haddon
'Labatut's voice comes from the future, to free us from the curse of our present' - Wolfram Eilenberger, author of 'Time of the Magicians'
'Darkly intelligent and feverishly propulsive' -Observer
'Brooding, heady... addictively interesting... gripping, provocative' - Wall Street Journal
'Virtuosic... Labatut is that vanishingly uncommon thing: a contemporary writer of thrilling originality... The MANIAC is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty' -Washington Post
'You just throw up your hands and think, Who cares what discourse label we assign this stuff? It's great...' -New York Times
'If you've yet to sample Labatut, stop wasting time. Get on the Labatut train.' -BookMunch
'Talent, ambition, skill, intelligence - [are] present in abundance.' -Guardian, Book of the Day
'Captivating' -Irish Times
'Thrilling - and chilling [...] A gripping read.' -Marie Claire, Best Books of 2023
'A dark, strange novel by a rising literary star' -New Scientist
'Intoxicating... this marvel of a book, which inspires awe and dread in equal measure, is stalked by the greatest terrors of the 20th century, yet its final heart-stopping sentence makes clear the greatest terrors are yet to come' -Daily Mail
'As addictive as a true crime tale' -Mail on Sunday
'Absorbing... perfect for anyone thirsting for more nuclear anxiety after watching Oppenheimer... reads like the physicist Carlo Rovelli crossed with the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft' -Chris Power, Sunday Times
'Both entertains and provokes... [Labatut's] infernal vision of science captures something of the unsettling vertigo of living right here in the Anthropocene after all' -TLS
'Emerging as the most significant South American writer since Borges... there is no one writing like him anywhere in the world' -Interview in the Telegraph
'Brilliantly cerebral'- 5*Sunday Telegraph
'Praise for' - When We Cease to Understand the World:
'A monstrous and brilliant book' - Philip Pullman
'Mesmerising and revelatory' - William Boyd
Book Information
ISBN 9781782279815
Author Benjamin Labatut
Format Hardback
Page Count 368
Imprint Pushkin Press
Publisher Pushkin Press