In a work of blistering dark hilarity, a young Nietzsche experiences life in a metal band & the tribulations of finals season in a modern secondary school When a new student transfers in from a posh private school, he falls in with a group of like-minded suburban stoners, artists, and outcasts—too smart and creative for their own good. His classmates nickname their new friend Nietzsche (for his braininess and bleak outlook on life), and decide he must be the front man of their metal band, now christened Nietzsche and the Burbs. With the abyss of graduation—not to mention their first gig—looming ahead, the group ramps up their experimentations with sex, drugs, and...nihilist philosophy. Are they as doomed as their intellectual heroes? And why does the end of youth feel like such a universal tragedy? And as they ponder life's biggies, this sly, elegant, and often laugh-out-loud funny story of would-be rebels becomes something special: an absorbing and stirring reminder of a particular, exciting yet bittersweet moment in life...and a reminder that all adolescents are philosophers, and all philosophers are adolescents at heart.

In a work of blistering dark hilarity, a young Nietzsche experiences life in a metal band & the tribulations of finals season in a modern secondary school When a new student transfers in from a posh private school, he falls in with a group of like-minded suburban stoners, artists, and outcasts—too smart and creative for their own good. His classmates nickname their new friend Nietzsche (for his braininess and bleak outlook on life), and decide he must be the front man of their metal band, now christened Nietzsche and the Burbs. With the abyss of graduation—not to mention their first gig—looming ahead, the group ramps up their experimentations with sex, drugs, and...nihilist philosophy. Are they as doomed as their intellectual heroes? And why does the end of youth feel like such a universal tragedy? And as they ponder life's biggies, this sly, elegant, and often laugh-out-loud funny story of would-be rebels becomes something special: an absorbing and stirring reminder of a particular, exciting yet bittersweet moment in life...and a reminder that all adolescents are philosophers, and all philosophers are adolescents at heart.

The writer Hari Kunzru says “made me feel better about the Apocalypse than I have in ages” is back—with a hilarious coming-of-age love story The unruly undergraduates at Cambridge have a nickname for their new lecturer: Wittgenstein Jr. He’s a melancholic, tormented genius who seems determined to make them grasp the very essence of philosophical thought. But Peters—a working-class student surprised to find himself among the elite—soon discovers that there’s no place for logic in a Cambridge overrun by posh boys and picnicking tourists, as England’s greatest university is collapsing under market pressures. Such a place calls for a derangement of the senses, best achieved by lethal homemade cocktails consumed on Cambridge rooftops, where Peters joins his fellows as they attempt to forget about the void awaiting them after graduation, challenge one another to think so hard they die, and dream about impressing Wittgenstein Jr with one single, noble thought. And as they scramble to discover what, indeed, they have to gain from the experience, they realize that their teacher is struggling to survive. For Peters, it leads to a surprising turn—and for all of them, a challenge to see how the life of the mind can play out in harsh but hopeful reality. Combining his trademark wit and sharp brilliance, Wittgenstein Jr is Lars Iyer’s most assured and ambitious novel yet—as impressive, inventive and entertaining as it is extraordinarily stirring.

In a raucous debut that summons up Britain's fabled Goon Squad comedies, writer and philosopher Lars Iyer tells the story of someone very like himself with a "slightly more successful" friend and their journeys in search of more palatable literary conferences and better gin. One reason for their journeys: the narrator's home is slowly being taken over by a fungus that no one seems to know what to do about. Before it completely swallows his house, the narrator feels compelled to solve some major philosophical questions (such as "Why?") and the meaning of his urge to write, as well as the source of the fungus ... before it is too late. Or, he has to move.

Iyer argues for the transformative potential for philosophy and political practice of the thought of Maurice Blanchot. The book traces Blanchot's complex negotiations of the thought of Hegel, Heidegger, Bataille and Levinas, which allowed him to develop his distinctive account of the work of art and his account of the opening to the Other. Iyer also examines the significance of Blanchot's interventions in French political life, in particular, his participation in the events of May 1968.

“[A] kaleidoscopic narrative . . . Tenacious, wildly original, and full of insight.” —San Francisco Chronicle “An alluring, atmospheric debut.” —People A Belletrist Book Club Pick A Most Anticipated Book of the Year Entertainment Weekly • The Millions • Bustle On the eve of Evangeline’s wedding on Winter Island, the groom may be lost at sea, a dead whale is trapped in the harbor, and Evie’s mostly absent mother has shown up out of the blue. From there, in this mesmerizing, provocative debut, the narrative flows back and forth through time as Evie reckons with her complicated upbringing—a weed-dealing, charming but neglectful father, a wild-child best friend—in this lush land off the coast of Southern California. With wit, love, and bracing flashes of anger, Creatures probes the complexities of family and abandonment, guilt and forgiveness, betrayal and grief—and exerts a pull as strong as the tides.

Of the many questions provoked by Blanchot's thought and writing, that of understanding its ethical and political significance is perhaps the most pressing. Spanning his literary critical and philosophical writings, and addressing such major concepts as the image and the neuter, Blanchot's Vigilance presents a sustained analysis of Blanchot's response to Levinas's ethical thought, the political commitments of the Surrealists, Heidegger's readings of the ancient Greeks, and the claims of psychoanalysis. In a series of thorough and lucid readings, Iyer presents Blanchot's central concern as maintaining a kind of vigilance over a difference which opens in the articulation of sense.

A plague of rats, the end of philosophy, the cosmic chicken, and bars that don’t serve Plymouth Gin—is this the Apocalypse or is it just America? “The apocalypse is imminent,” thinks W. He has devoted his life to philosophy, but he is about to be cast out from his beloved university. His friend Lars is no help at all—he’s too busy fighting an infestation of rats in his flat. A drunken lecture tour through the American South proves to be another colossal mistake. In desperation, the two British intellectuals turn to Dogma, a semi-religious code that might yet give meaning to their lives. Part Nietzsche, part Monty Python, part Huckleberry Finn, Dogma is a novel as ridiculous and profound as religion itself. The sequel to the acclaimed novel Spurious, Dogma is the second book in one of the most original literary trilogies since Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable.

From the author of The Seed Collectors comes a darkly comic take on power, privilege, and the pressure put on young women to fit in—and be thin—at their all–girls boarding school It's already the second week of term when Natasha, the daughter of a Russian oligarch, arrives at a vast English country house for her first day of boarding school. She soon discovers that the headmaster gives special treatment to the skinniest girls, and Tash finds herself thrown into the school's unfamiliar, moneyed world of fierce pecking orders, eating disorders, and Instagram angst. The halls echo with the story of Princess Augusta, the White Lady whose portraits—featuring a hypnotizing black diamond—hang everywhere and whose ghost is said to haunt the dorms. It's said that she fell in love with a commoner and drowned herself in the lake. But the girls don't really know anything about the woman she was, much less anything about one another. When Tash's friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, the routines of the school seem darker and more alien than ever before. Tash must try to stay alive—and sane—while she uncovers what's really going on. Darkly hilarious, Oligarchy is Heathers for the digital age, a Prep populated with the teenage children of the European elite, exploring youth, power, and affluence. Scarlett Thomas captures the lives of these privileged young women, in all their triviality and magnitude, seeking acceptance and control in a manipulative world.

"Memorable characters make this a singular exploration of the human condition." - Publishers Weekly A scathingly funny look at a group of quirky graduate students majoring in Disaster Studies who are forced to reconsider their cynicism when they confront a new student who, remarkably, has the same name as the 20th Century Catholic mystic philosopher Simone Weil ... My Weil follows a group of twenty-something PhD students of the new-fangled subject Disaster Studies at an inferior university in Manchester, England, the post-industrial city of so much great music and culture. They’re working class, by turns underconfident and grandiose (especially when they drink) and are reconciled to never finishing their dissertations or finding academic jobs. Their immediate enemies are the drone-like Business Studies students all around them, as well as the assured and serene PhD students of the posh university up the road. And they’re working together on a film, through which they’re trying to make sense of their lives in Manchester and, in particular, to the Ees, a mysterious patch of countryside that appears to have supernatural qualities. Into their midst arrives Simone Weil, a PhD student, a version of the twentieth century philosopher, who becomes the unlikely star of their film. Simone is devout, ascetic, intensely serious, and busy with risky charity work with the homeless. Valentine, hustler-philosopher, recognises Simone as a fellow would-be saint. But Gita, Indian posh-girl, is suspicious: what’s with Simone’s nun-shoes? And Marcie (AKA Den Mom), the leader of the pack, is too busy with her current infatuation, nicknamed Ultimate Destruction Girl, to notice. The narrator, Johnny, who was brought up in care and is psychologically fragile, and deeply disturbed by the poverty of his adopted city, gradually falls in love in Simone. But will his love be requited? Will Simone be able to save the souls of her new friends and Manchester itself from apocalypse?