Preparation for the Next Life: Winner of the 2015 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

(Paperback)

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Description

In post-9/11 New York, Zou Lei is an illegal immigrant from northwest China. Forced to work fourteen-hour days and live in squalor, she nevertheless embraces the many freedoms her adopted homeland has to offer. Damaged by three tours in Iraq, veteran Brad Skinner comes to New York with the sole intention of partying as hard as he can in order to forget what he's seen. Impulsive and angry, Skinner's re-entry into civilian life seems doomed. But when he meets Zou Lei they discover that new beginnings may be possible for both of them, that is if they can survive homelessness, lockup and Skinner's post-traumatic stress disorder. Set in the underbelly of New York, Preparation for the Next Life exposes an America as seen from the fringes of society in devastating detail and destroys the myth of the American Dream through two of the most remarkable characters in contemporary fiction.

Reviews

'Extraordinary, challenging and...thrilling...So simple, so heartbreaking, so very, very good'.

* Independent *

'[An] unfailingly vivid and engaged portrait of life on the margins of society'

* Financial Times Books of 2015 *

Punches its way, bare-knuckled, through every millennial New York novel centring around middle-class intellectual characters kicking typical tales of artsy, east-coast intelligentsia romance into a dumpster. But its real target, sought out with a heat-seeking precision, is far weightier, and that is America itself

* Observer *

Extraordinary Make it new was Ezra Pounds exhortation Lish does exactly that astonishing nothing less than a triumph, worthy of every heroic adjective a critic could throw. It is a reminder, plain and simple, of what fiction is for

* FT *

Powerful Lish writes with rare confidence he doesnt forget that a good love story should break your heart

* Metro *

A blistering novel bigger than the sum of its parts. I can think of no better recent fiction book to read as the presidential election circuit gears up.

* The Times *

'Atticus Lish is a writer on a stratospheric rise, and rightly so...the book is getting plenty of attention for all the right reasons'

* Irish Independent *

'This book is a masterwork.'

* Alan Warner, author of Morvern Callar *

Impressive.. Charged with breathless momentum substantial and beguilingThis is, in the end, a profoundly political book

* Guardian *

'Here is a raw first novel with a low center of gravity. Set in Queens, it dilates upon blinkered lives, scummy apartments, dismal food and bad options. At its heart is a love story between a Chinese immigrant and a veteran of the Iraq war. Mr. Lishs narrative is intense, moving and somehow necessary.'

-- Dwight Garner * New York Times, 2014 Books of the Year *

'A raw, sharply rendered love story, a stark portrayal of New York, an unsparing autopsy of the Bush years, and as ambitious and impressive a debut as you could wish for'.

* Irish Times *

Extraordinarily powerful The burning intensity of the prose fully absorbs all the detail Lishs remarkable debut fuses raw realism with narrative poetry to truly memorable effect

* Sunday Times *

A significant contribution striking [Lish] isnt catching a mood but building a world we look to long novels for richness, not perfection, for power, not precision, so we should savour Lishs audacity and open heart, his refusal to coddle or console

* Daily Telegraph *

Magnificent one of the best recent novels I have read about work as it exists for millions of people attests to a more profound and intimate knowledge of how life functions on the margins

* New Statesman *

The finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade.

* New York Times *

'A tragedy-bound love story with a gritty contemporary setting...Lish's matter-of-fact style somehow manages to elevate the everyday and urban into an art form...There is an echo here of T. S. Eliot or...The Great Gatsby'.

* Third Way Magazine *

'Extraordinary, challenging and...thrilling'.

* Belfast Telegraph *

'Deeply moving'

* Carnegie Europe *

A stunning debut novel Lishs prose is at once raw and disciplined, and every word feels necessary.

* Publishers Weekly *

Will pull you in completely compelling and persuasive a New York which you wont read about that often poetic theres a beautiful exactness

* RTE *

Importan[t]Lish excels at dialogue

* Literary Review *

Astonishing, gorgeous It is hard to imagine a more daunting task for a novelist than to say something new about 9/11. Preparation for the Next Life is dizzying in its ambition and exhilarating in its triumph. Clancy Martin,

-- Clancy Martin * New York Review of Books *

A tremendous book, relentless, moving, written in prose of marvellous integrity. Now that America and the novel are dead, I hope we can have more great American novels as alive as this one.

* Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask *

A tour de force of urban naturalism a love story thats as bold and urgent as any youll read this year.

-- Sam Sacks * Wall Street Journal *

The most relevant, and beautiful, novel of the year.

* Scott McClanahan, author of Crapalachia and Hill William *

'Lovely and soft, tragic and cutting... maybe the most surprising novel of the year, for the author's sudden, astounding appearance on the scene, yes, but more for the temporal details matched succeeded by glowing tenderness.'

-- Vanity Fair

'A bare-knuckled tale about two lost souls.'

-- O, the Oprah Magazine

'A sledgehammer to the American dream.'

-- Kirkus

'Atticus Lish writes with beauty, striking attention to detail, and painful honesty about life on the margins of America about the people we dont see, the places we dont go.'

-- BuzzFeed

'Not since Charles Fraziers Cold Mountain have such arduously yearning treks been made through maddening, heartbreaking obstructions in the name of love.'

-- New York Journal of Books

'In the twenty-first-century United States, oppression is disorganized, random and proceeds largely through neglect. Still, it crushes plenty of people. The wretched of the earth are here among us, for the most part silencedbut with this novel, Lish has given them an unmistakable voice.'

-- The Nation

'So much of American fiction has become playful, cynical and evasive. Preparation for the Next Life is the strong antidote to such inconsequentialities. Powerfully realistic, with a solemn, muscular lyricism, this is a very, very good book.'

-- Joy Williams, author of State of Grace

'Violent, swift, and gloriously descriptive. [Preparation for the Next Life] is love story and lament, a haunting record of unraveling lives. Lish says starkly and with enormous power: the spirit prevails until it doesnt. A stunning debut.'

-- Noy Holland, author of Swim for the Little One First

'Preparation for the Next Life is that rare novel that grabs you by the shirt and slaps you hard in the face. Look, it says. It isn't pretty. Turn away at your own risk. In case you haven't noticed, the American Dream has become a nightmare. Atticus Lish has your wake up call.'

-- Christopher Kennedy, author of Ennui Prophet

Author Bio

Atticus Lish is the author of Life is With People. He served a brief stretch in the Marine Corps in the warfree period between Gulf One and 9/11. He lives in New York.