A
New Yorker
best book of 2024 | A
Financial Times
Best Translated Book of 2024
Library Science September book club pick |
Vulture
most anticipated book
One of
The New York Times’
24 works of fiction to read of fall 2024 | A
Guardian
best translated fiction pick |
Town & Country
must-read fall book
“It’s a thrill to hear the characters develop on the page . . . One of the better portrayals of addiction I’ve encountered in literature, up there with books by Jean Rhys and Leslie Jamison.” ―Joumana Khatib,
The New York Times Book Review
“Engrossing . . . Full of emotional suspense.” ―Pamela Druckerman,
The French novel taking the world by storm: an ultracontemporary
Dangerous Liaisons
about sex, feminism, and addiction.
Dear Dickhead,
I read your post on Insta. You’re like a pigeon shitting on my shoulder as you flap past. It’s shitty and unpleasant. Waah, waah, waah, I’m a pissy little pantywaist, no one loves me so I whimper like a Chihuahua in the hope someone will notice me. Congratulations: you’ve got your fifteen minutes of fame! You want proof? I’m writing to you.
Oscar is a B-list novelist in his forties. He used to be an alcoholic and a cokehead, but now he keeps himself busy by ranting on social media. When Rebecca, an actress whose looks he insulted, sends him an angry email, they strike up a combative correspondence—at the very moment that Oscar is accused of sexual harassment by his former publicist. What ensues is a no-holds-barred conversation about life under the patriarchy, and above all about addiction—to drugs, to alcohol, to the internet, to rage.
Virginie Despentes, the celebrated author of
King Kong Theory
, has written her breakthrough book: a
for our time. We follow Rebecca and Oscar as they develop an unlikely friendship and argue over questions of right and wrong in a city—Paris—where pleasure, excess, and freedom rule the day, or used to.
Dear Dickhead
is a guns-blazing novel about a culture that makes men and women sick, and about how the search for feeling leaves us addicted to what makes us feel. The result is a provocative and unmissable book from the author hailed by
The Guardian
as France’s “rock and roll Zola.”