Hari Kunzru

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are widely known as the greatest Russian writers of science fiction, and their 1964 novel Hard to Be a God is considered one of the greatest of their works. It tells the story of Don Rumata, who is sent from Earth to the medieval kingdom of Arkanar with instructions to observe and to influence, but never to directly interfere. Masquerading as an arrogant nobleman, a dueler and a brawler, Don Rumata is never defeated but can never kill. With his doubt and compassion, and his deep love for a local girl named Kira, Rumata wants to save the kingdom from the machinations of Don Reba, the First Minister to the king. But given his orders, what role can he play? Hard to Be a God has inspired a computer role-playing game and two movies, including Aleksei German's long-awaited swan song. Yet until now the only English version (out of print for over thirty years) was based on a German translation, and was full of errors, infelicities, and misunderstandings. This new edition--translated by Olena Bormashenko, whose translation of the authors' Roadside Picnic has received widespread acclaim, and supplemented with a new foreword by Hari Kunzru and an afterword by Boris Strugatsky, both of which supply much-needed context--reintroduces one of the most profound Soviet-era novels to an eager audience.

In the latest novel from award-winning author Hari Kunzru, a failed artist who was big in the nineties grapples with his storied, difficult past and uncertain present, all while convalescing secretly in the cottage of his lost love, who just so happens to be married to his former best friend.

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK - From one of the sharpest voices in fiction today, a profound and enthralling novel about beauty and power, capital, art and those who devote their lives to creating it "I read everything Hari Kunzru writes, for my highest pleasure and my deepest sustenance." --Rachel Kushner Once, Jay was an artist. After graduating from art school in London, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career taking shape before him. That was not to happen. Now, undocumented in the United States, having survived Covid, he lives out of his car and barely makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. One day, as Jay attempts to make a delivery at a house surrounded by acres of woods, he is confronted by his destructive past: Alice, a former lover from his art school days, and the friend she left him for. Recognizing Jay's dire circumstances, Alice invites him to stay on their property--where an erratic gallery owner and his girlfriend are isolating as well--setting in motion a reckoning that has been decades in the making. Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time, delivering an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind.

In the latest novel from award-winning author Hari Kunzru, a failed artist who was big in the nineties grapples with his storied, difficult past and uncertain present, all while convalescing secretly in the cottage of his lost love, who just so happens to be married to his former best friend.

From one of the sharpest voices in fiction today, a profound and enthralling novel about beauty, power, and capital's influence on art and those who devote their lives to creating it. 'Blue Ruin is bracingly intelligent and often just plain beautiful. It’s a reminder that fiction, at its best, is a place to encounter new experiences and dwell in big ideas. Kunzru is known for ambitious novels that bring politics to rich, imaginative life; Blue Ruin shows him at the top of his game.' Sandra Newman, Guardian 'Book of the Day' 'I read everything Hari Kunzru writes, for my highest pleasure and my deepest sustenance.' Rachel Kushner 'Genuinely thrilling...both a sharp dissection of the oily inner workings of the art world, and a compelling portrait of one man’s desperate attempt to escape complicity in the capitalist machine.' Financial Times Once Jay was tipped for greatness, a rising star of the London art scene. Now, he lives out of his car and earns money delivery groceries to the wealthy of upstate New York, while all around a terrible pandemic rages. When Jay arrives at a house set in an enormous acreage of woodland, he is shocked to see somebody he thought forever lost to him. Standing on the porch is Alice, a lover from his art school days. Their relationship was tumultuous and destructive, ultimately ending when she left him for his best friend and fellow artist Rob. Alice and Rob have achieved the riches and success for which Jay once seemed destined. Ashamed and debilitated by the virus that has ravaged his body, Jay hopes she won't recognise him behind his dirty surgical mask. When she does, however, she invites him to recover on the property, setting in motion a reckoning decades in the making. Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind. 'Kunzru's brilliance is his ability to fold vertiginous questions [...] into his storytelling. In its unnerving depiction of [...] uneasy relationships, Blue Ruin not only keeps pace with White Tears and Red Pill, but also confirms his status as a master choreographer of the present moment's creeping anxiety.' Literary Review “[Blue Ruin] promises to be harrowing and darkly funny. Kunzru has a knack for the nightmarish present, and few things feel more nightmarish than a forced confrontation with the past in the early stages of the pandemic.” Lit Hub, 'Most Anticipated Books of 2024' “Kunzru’s [Blue Ruin] is a triumph of beauty and a true ode to the artist.” Oprah Daily, 'Most Anticipated Books of 2024' “Kunzru takes on the excessive and rapacious tendencies of the art world in his dazzling latest . . . [Blue Ruin] is immensely satisfying.” Publishers Weekly “A lively, ever-intensifying story of race, immigration, work, and what it means to earn a living . . . [Blue Ruin is] a darkly ironic tale of two bubbles—an art world divorced from economic reality and a Covid era that segregated us from society . . . A dark, smart, provocative tale of the perils of art making.” Kirkus “Exquisite writing and keen insights into class tensions and creative dilemmas. Kunzru affirms that it’s always a good time to live an examined life, even during a pandemic.” Booklist

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK - From one of the sharpest voices in fiction today, a profound and enthralling novel about beauty and power, capital, art and those who devote their lives to creating it Once, Jay was an artist. After graduating from art school in London, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career taking shape before him. That was not to happen. Now, undocumented in the United States, having survived Covid, he lives out of his car and barely makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. One day, as Jay attempts to make a delivery at a house surrounded by acres of woods, he is confronted by his destructive past: Alice, a former lover from his art school days, and the friend she left him for. Recognizing Jay's dire circumstances, Alice invites him to stay on their property--where an erratic gallery owner and his girlfriend are isolating as well--setting in motion a reckoning that has been decades in the making. Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time, delivering an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A bold new novel about searching for order in a world that frames madness as truth from the widely acclaimed author of White Tears After receiving a prestigious writing fellowship in Germany, the narrator of Red Pill arrives in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and struggles to accomplish anything at all. Instead of working on the book he has proposed to write, he takes long walks and binge-watches Blue Lives, a violent cop show that becomes weirdly compelling in its bleak, Darwinian view of life. He soon begins to wonder if his writing has any value at all. Wannsee is full of ghosts: Across the lake, the narrator can see the villa where the Nazis planned the Final Solution, and in his walks he passes the grave of the Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist, who killed himself after deciding that "no happiness was possible here on earth." At a party, he meets the charismatic Anton, creator of Blue Lives, and the narrator begins to believe that the two of them are engaged in a cosmic battle. Anton is "red-pilling" his viewers--turning them toward an ugly, alt-rightish worldview, he thinks, as he starts to wonder if he is losing his mind.

When a Brooklyn writer leaves behind his young family to take up the offer of a three month residency at the Deuter Centre on the shore of Berlin’s Lake Wannsee, he arrives with romantic dreams of days devoted to total artistic absorption. However, The Deuter Centre turns out to be anything but the idyllic writerly retreat he imagines and, rather than study at the clinical and closely monitored desk assigned to him, he opts to spend much of the time holed up in his bedroom watching Blue Lives, an ultraviolent cop show with a bleak and merciless view of the world. One night, while at a glamourous party in the city, he meets Anton, the charismatic creator of Blue Lives, and they strike up a passionate and alcohol-fueled conversation about the pessimism at the show’s core. It is a conversation that marks the beginning of the writer’s obsession with Anton and leads him on a journey into the heart of moral darkness that threatens to destroy everything he holds most dear, including his own mind. Red Pill is a novel about the alt-right, online culture, creativity, sanity and history. It is the story of the 21st century, told through the prism of the centuries that preceded it, and it shows how the darkest chapters of our past have returned to haunt our present. More than anything, though, Red Pill is a story about love and how it can endure in a world where everything else seems to have lost all meaning.

Hari Kunzrus kritikerhyllede roman Hvite tårer er en ubarmhjertig og fullstendig fengslende litterær thriller, men samtidig også mye, mye mer: Den er et kjærlighetsbrev til alle de glemte geniene i musikkhistorien, og rommer dessuten en særs aktuell diskusjon av rase i et samtidige USA. Hvite tårer er en heseblesende bok som lever videre lenge etter at man har lest den siste siden. To noen-og-tjue år gamle newyorkere. Seth er keitet og sjenert – Carter den glamorøse arvingen til en av USAs største formuer. De to har én ting felles, nemlig lidenskapen for musikk. Da Seth ved en tilfeldighet tar opp en ukjent bluessanger i parken, lager Carter en miks som han publiserer på nettet som en «forsvunnet» innspilling av artisten Charlie Shaw. Den blir en sensasjon blant platesamlere. Seth og Carter besøker en mann som hevder Charlie Shaw levde i virkeligheten, men på hjemveien blir Carter utsatt for et overfall. Mens Carter ligger i koma, drar Seth og Carters søster Leonie til dypet av Sørstatene for å komme til bunns i legenden om Charlie Shaw. Det blir en reise tilbake i fortiden, hvor en historie om grådighet, misunnelse, hevn og utnyttelse etter hvert skal åpenbare seg.

A feverish new tale from the bestselling author of The Impressionist: two ambitious young musicians are drawn into a dark underworld, haunted by the ghosts of a repressive past Two twenty-something New Yorkers: Seth, awkward and shy, and Carter, the trust fund hipster. They have one thing in common: an obsession with music. Rising fast on the New York producing scene, they stumble across an old blues song long forgotten by history -- and everything starts to unravel. Carter is drawn far down a path that allows no return, and Seth has no choice but to follow his friend into the darkness. Trapped in a game they don't understand, Hari Kunzru's characters move unsteadily across the chessboard, caught between black and white, performer and audience, righteous and forsaken. But we have been here before, oh so many times over, and the game always ends the same way ... Electrifying, subversive and wildly original, White Tears is a ghost story and a love story, a story about lost innocence and historical guilt. This unmissable novel penetrates the heart of a nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge and exploitation, and holding a mirror up to the true nature of America today.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post - San Francisco Chronicle - NPR - GQ - Time - The Economist - Slate - HuffPost - Book Riot Ghost story, murder mystery, love letter to American music--White Tears is all of this and more, a thrilling investigation of race and appropriation in society today. Seth is a shy, awkward twentysomething. Carter is more glamorous, the heir to a great American fortune. But they share an obsession with music--especially the blues. One day, Seth discovers that he's accidentally recorded an unknown blues singer in a park. Carter puts the file online, claiming it's a 1920s recording by a made-up musician named Charlie Shaw. But when a music collector tells them that their recording is genuine--that there really was a singer named Charlie Shaw--the two white boys, along with Carter's sister, find themselves in over their heads, delving deeper and deeper into America's dark, vengeful heart. White Tears is a literary thriller and a meditation on art--who owns it, who can consume it, and who profits from it.

Jaz and Lisa Matharu are plunged into a public hell after their son, Raj, vanishes during a family vacation in the California desert. However, the Mojave is a place of strange power. Before Raj reappears-- inexplicably unharmed, but not unchanged--the fate of this young family will intersect with that of many others, both past and present, who have traveled through this odd, remote town in the shadow of a mysterious rock formation known as the Pinnacles. Among them are an 18th-century Spanish missionary, a former WWII aviation engineer turned desert-cult messiah, and an incognito rock star on the run. As their stories collide and build upon one another, Gods Without Men becomes a heartfelt exploration of the search for meaning in a chaotic universe.

Mike Frame fyller femti år. Hans samboer, Miranda, skal holde selskap for ham. Problemet er at han ikke har bursdag - og at han ikke heter Mike Frame. Han har en fortid som Miranda og stedatteren Sam, ikke vet noe om. På sekstitallet var Mike medlem av en venstreradikal gruppering, og het Chris Carver. Chris Carver brøt med sin middelklassefamilie og kastet seg ut i et liv fullt av Vietnam-demonstrasjoner, narkotika, idealisme, new age, husokkupasjoner, fengselsopphold, studiesirkler og vegetarmat. Sammen med vakre Anna Addison forandrer Chris seg fra borgelig yngling til radikal student. Men grupperingens virksomhet eskalerer fra politiske demonstrasjoner til rene terrorhandlinger. Chris` engasjement ender med at han må skaffe seg ny identitet. Flere tiår etter fører en uventet konfrontasjon med fortiden til at han må ta et oppgjør med hvem han var den gang - og hvem han egentlig er nå.

"Powerful" (The New Yorker), "extraordinary" (The New York Times Book Review), and "brilliant" (Entertainment Weekly)--you won't be able to put down this novel by the award-winning bestselling author of White Tears and Blue Ruin Critics have compared him to Martin Amis, Zadie Smith, Tom Wolfe, and Don DeLillo. Granta dubbed him "one of the twenty best fiction writers under forty." In My Revolutions, Hari Kunzru delivers his best novel yet. Chris Carver is living a lie. His wife, their teenage daughter, and everyone in their circle know him as Michael Frame, suburban dad. They have no idea that as a radical student during the sixties, he briefly became a terrorist, protesting the Vietnam War by setting off bombs. Until one day a ghost from his past turns up on his doorstep, forcing Chris on the run.

It’s the day before Mike Frame’s fiftieth birthday and his quiet provincial life is suddenly falling apart. But perhaps it doesn’t matter, because it’s not his life in the first place. He has a past that his partner Miranda and step-daughter Sam know nothing about, lived under another name amidst the turbulence of the revolutionary armed struggle of the 1970s. Now Mike is seeing ghosts – a dead ex-lover and an old friend who wants to reminisce. Mike can no longer ignore the contradiction between who he is and who he once was. Which side was he on back then? And which side is he on now?

Hari Kunzru's Transmission is a witty novel about cyberspace, a Bollywood dancer and a world where everyone is connected. It's the twenty-first century, and everything and everyone is connected. Meet Arjun Mehta, an Indian cybergeek catapulted into California's spiralling hi-tech sector; Leela Zahir, beguiling Bollywood actress filming in the midge-infested Scottish wilds; and Guy Swift, hyped-up marketing exec lost in a blue-sky tomorrow of his own devising. Three dislocated individuals seeking nodes of connectivity - a place to fit in. Yet this is the twenty-first century, and their lives are about to become unexpectedly entangled as a virus spreads, and all their futures are rewired. But will it take them further from their dreams, or closer to their hearts?'An aphoristic joke, a neat turn of phrase; a joke that makes you laugh . . . there's nothing Kunzru couldn't manage in prose. Thoroughly engrossing' Literary Review'Funny, heartfelt and beautifully written, confirms Kunzru as one of the most talented writers of his generation' Image'Very enjoyable, I couldn't put it down. Funny and wry; it is deftly plotted; its characters intimately drawn. Blissful' Observer'Utterly affecting, a novel with devastating satirical bite' Financial TimesHari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions and Gods Without Men, and the story collection Noise. He lives in New York.