Something oracular and terrifying lurks just below the surface of the pitch-perfect digressions and character assassinations, like uncovering the evidence for a long-dismissed paranoia and finding yourself an unwitting instigator of the conspiracy. I have no idea quite how Rivière makes such an undertaking a compulsive and delightful page-turner - I wish I did, because I'd steal it. The novel seduces through relentlessly nested narratives, endlessly psychologically refracted. A rare and brilliant pleasure’ Nicolette Polek, author of Imaginary Museumsĭead Souls is the literary equivalent of a 100% cocoa bar: intimidating, bitter, rich, and ultimately the only one worth your time. ‘Sublime, legendary, delightfully unhinged. ‘Elegant, ambitious, very serious and very funny’ Katharine Kilalea, author of OK, Mr. I haven’t been so excited by a debut novel in a long time’ Luke Kennard, author of The Transition

‘Reading Dead Souls feels like discovering the British Bolaño, and not just for the gleeful dismantling of the cultural ego: the restless, searching sensibility the precise tuning-in to contradictory voices. In a conversation that lasts until morning, he will hear Solomon Wiese’s story of his spectacular fall from grace.Ī story about a scandal that has shaken the literary world and an accusation of serial plagiarism.Ī story about childhood encounters with nothingness and a friend’s descent into psychosis about conspiracies and poetry cults about a love affair with a woman carrying a signpost and the death of an old poet.Ī story about a retreat to the East Anglian countryside and plans for a triumphant return to the capital, through the theft of poems, illegal war profits and faked social media accounts – plans in which our unnamed narrator discovers he is obscurely implicated…Ī story that will take the entire night – and the remainder of the novel – to tell. Later that evening, at the bar of the Travelodge near Waterloo Bridge, our unnamed narrator will encounter that very same Solomon Wiese. ‘I first heard about Solomon Wiese on a bright, blustery day on the South Bank…’

Reading it felt like overhearing the most exhilarating, funny, mean conversation imaginable–which is to say it made me extremely happy and I dreaded it ending’ Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation It’s funny, smart and beautifully written’ Alex Preston, The Guardian ‘Full of clever postmodern flourishes, self-referential winks and riotous set pieces. ‘Mordant, torrential, incantatory, Bolano-esque, Perec-ian, and just so explosively written that I had to stop and shake the language-shrapnel from my hair and wipe it off my eyeglasses so I could keep reading’ Jonathan Lethem

Dead Souls by Sam Riviere