None of This Is Normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer

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Description

In the first book-length study of this provocative writer, Benjamin J. Robertson reveals how writer Jeff VanderMeer creates fictions that directly address our Anthropocene epoch. None of This Is Normal shows how VanderMeer's work conjures what Robertson calls a "fantastic materiality": a reality that stands apart from us as a model of thinking, irreducible to our own.

Reviews

"None of This Is Normal is the first book-length study of the weird fiction of Jeff VanderMeer. Benjamin J. Robertson not only highlights the beauty and power of VanderMeer's fiction, but also shows how this writing is central to any attempt to think through the plight of humanity in what has come to be called the Anthropocene."Steven Shaviro, author of The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism

"This spirited book disturbs the new normal of the Anthropocene by way of the New Weird in Jeff VanderMeer's fiction. At once a meditation on fantastic materiality and a step toward life after aftermath, this first dedicated study of VanderMeer tells a new story about humans and nonhumans both."Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University

"None of This Is Normal offers readers a rich, extended conversation between VanderMeer and Robertson, pointing out how crucial literary texts are to theorizings of themselves." American Literary History

Author Bio

Benjamin J. Robertson is assistant professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder and coeditor of The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media.

Jeff VanderMeer is author of the best-selling Southern Reach Trilogy, which has been translated into thirty-five languages. His latest books include Borne and The Strange Bird.