Generation A - Hardcover

Coupland, Douglas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0434019836 ISBN 13: 9780434019830

Publisher: William Heinemann, 2009

Synopsis

In the near future bees are extinct - until five unconnected individuals, in different parts of the wowrld, are stung. Immediately snatched up by ominous figures in hazmat suits, interrogated searately in neutral Ikea-like chambers, and then released as 15-minute-celebrities into a world driven almost entirely by the internet, these five unforgettable people endure a barrage of unusual and highly 21st-century circumstances. A charismatic scientist with dubious motives eventually brings the quintet together, and their shared experience unites them in a way they could never have imagined.

Generation A mirrors the structure of 1991's Generation X as it champions the act of reading and storytelling as one of the few defences we still have against the constant bombardment of the senses in a digital world. Like much of Coupland's writing, it occupies the perplexing hinterland between optimism about the future and everyday, apocalyptic paranoia, and is his most ambitious and entertaining novel to date.

About this title

Product Description:

Rare Book

Review:

`With this exceptional sequel to GENERATION X, Douglas Coupland may be one of the smartest, wittiest writers around ... He is a terrifically good writer ... GENERATION A is set in the near future ... Bees have become extinct, but then five people are stung ... It is the attempt to get to the bottom of this mystery that brings the five together on an Alaskan island where they are made to tell stories to one another. Coupland weaves common elements across these tales and into the main narrative: large themes ... comic themes ... existential themes ... There is a compelling plot ... Coupland scatters his smartly satirical observations throughout ... This is a clever, brilliant book - and it's loads better than GENERATION X ... funny and profound.' --Esquire

`Eighteen years on from GENERATION X, Coupland still satirises pop culture better than anyone. This globe-spanning tale, set in the near future, is masterfully told and often hilarious.' --GQ

`Highly recommended. Like Murakami in thriller-trope mode. Go for it.' --William Gibson

`Fans of Coupland will rejoice: here is another bizarre, postmodern fable that takes the canon, mixes it up with life right now, wraps them both around a Coupland-shaped holes and turns the lot into a glittering, literary Mobius strip ... Coupland's audacious flights of fancy, his laugh-out-loud dialogue and his magnificent ability to bring it all back to storytelling and orange-flavour Tang, they're all here ... Such a treat.' --Independent on Sunday

`A delightful Decameron of a book ... Book by book, as the mass confusions of the new millennium rumble on, he's doing a proper 19th-century novelist's job - building characters that try to persist and cohere, in the best and worst of times. And with a true sense of vocation, his ambition is to capture the totality of a society, to hear the collective plainsong through the static ... Coupland captures, with some poignancy, a coming truth about our post-consumerist age of eco-limits ... In this real return to form, Coupland's playfulness is rich, educative and even consoling.' --Independent

`[A] visionary author ... rock'n'roll yet deadly serious, a caustic social commentator and delineator of the near future ... He's caught midway between technophilia and technophobia ... there's no better place to be for a contemporary prophet.' --Sunday Times

`One of the great satirists of modern disposable culture ... Coupland's satirical take on technology and personal alienation has never been more relevant ... GENERATION A is a comic attack on what one character calls "our modern fame-driven culture, with its real-time marinade of electronic information" ... Classic Coupland ... but you can detect a new seriousness in Coupland's writing ... GENERATION A is Coupland's most hopeful novel yet. The "A" indicates that we are at the beginning of something new, ready to build fresh narratives from the consumer rubble.' --Sunday Telegraph

`[An] intoxicating cocktail of literary influences ... Coupland [is] a joy to read ... A globally ambitious novel, and all the better for it.' --Guardian

`GENERATION A hints at an idealism, a generation that could be at the beginning of something, although it may be too passive and self-involved to realise it ... Beneath the typically brilliant, sharp wisecracks and riffs about fashion products, relationships and lifestyle, there is tangible outrage at the violation of Nature ... Moving and meaningful.' --The Times

`One of the most popular serious writers of our time ... Coupland is one of the few serious writers who seems to be living entirely in the present moment, or perhaps even a little ahead of it.' -- Aravind Adiga, Financial Times

About this edition

• Publisher: William Heinemann
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0434019836
• ISBN 13: 9780434019830
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320