Reality and Other Stories
16 December 2022
Territory Rights — Worldwide including Singapore and Malaysia, but excluding Canada, the rest of the British Commonwealth and the European Union.
Description
A Kirkus Reviews Best Short Fiction of 2021 Selection
Ghost stories for the digital age by the Booker Prize–longlisted author of The Wall.
In 2017, inspired in part by Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, the acclaimed English novelist John Lanchester published a ghost story in The New Yorker. "Signal," an eerie story of contemporary life and the perils of technology, was a sensation among readers—and since then Lanchester has written several more.
Reality and Other Stories gathers the best of these, taking readers to an uncanny world familiar to fans of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. Household gizmos with a mind of their own. Mysterious cell-phone calls from unknown numbers. Reality TV shows and the creeping suspicion that none of this is real…
Reality and Other Stories is a book of disquiet that captures the severe disconnection and distraction of our time.
Reviews
"A smart book, scary as hell, and also a whole lot of fun…[Reality and Other Stories is] as endlessly entertaining as it is legitimately frightening." — Michael Schaub, NPR.org
"Ingenious…[Lanchester's stories] send a shiver down the spine." — Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"John Lanchester's collection of tech-y ghost stories seems especially appealing right now...The eight tales in Lanchester's Reality and Other Stories are meant to entertain, to take you out of yourself for a space—and that they deftly do." — Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
"This intriguing debut collection grapples with technology and its illusion of convenience, choice and escape. Lanchester, a British novelist and journalist, has a sharp eye for social class and setting in his ghost stories for the digital age." — Vanessa Hua, New York Times Book Review
"Brisk, vinegar-sharp satires that horrify and amuse in equal measure." — Guardian
"A mind-bending collection about the multifaceted scariness of the way we live now." — Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"Very clever, very modern 'entertainments.'" — Financial Times (UK)
"Across these immensely enjoyable and varied tales, Lanchester embraces the camp silliness of the gothic sensibility, while also making astute observations about our ever-developing digital reality." — Booklist
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