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16 September 2020

NS Recommends: New books from Hari Kunzru, Susan Owens, Mieko Kawakami and Sean R Roberts

Kunzru’s Red Pill, Owens’ Spirit of Place, Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs (translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd), and Roberts’ The War on the Uyghurs.

By New Statesman

Red Pill
Hari Kunzru

The unnamed narrator of Hari Kunzru’s cerebral novel is an essayist struggling to write a book on the self in Romantic poetry. On a fellowship at a research institute in Berlin, the narrator binge-watches a violent police show. The book spins off into a twisted tale about Counter-Enlightenment philosophy, memories of Stasi-ruled East Germany, the alt-right, and the insidious hedging of racist and conspiratorial thinking, with flippancy and humour. Knowingly highbrow, Kunzru is a consummate storyteller and has composed one of this year’s coolest, but quietly menacing, novels.

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