Trafik

(Paperback)

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Description

• Think sexy Wall-E: Trafik is a super fun, zany, engaging read, full of fun Easter egg references to history and pop culture. Theres also a very touching thread about the enduring importance of books and art.
• Trafik is a fantastic mix of sci-fi and experimental literary fiction. Were discovering that readers increasingly look to Coffee House to find the intersection of highly literary and genre work, so this fits right in with that.
• Rikki is a legend with an enthusiastic readership. This is her tenth novel, the third with Coffee House. She has also published many books of poetry and is a well-known visual artist. She has won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and two Lannan Literary Awards, and was a finalist for the NBCC Award.
• Rikkis past work has been beloved by indie booksellers, and we plan to get lots of bookseller support for Trafik early on.
• Past review coverage for Rikkis work has included the New York Times,Los Angeles Times,The Nation,Boston Globe, and more. Well include highlights of past praise in the frontmatter of the book.
• For fans of Yoko Tawadas The Emissary, Jeff VanderMeers Dead Astronauts, and Philip K. Dick/Ridley Scotts Blade Runner.

Reviews

In a future where all thats left of Earth are the records of random trivia, a human-ish astronaut and her robot companion decide to abandon their mission. . . . On this journey, the two will confront the biggest questions about existence, identity, and experience: What makes a human Where does consciousness reside It could all become very serious, if Ducornet werent so skilled in absurdity. Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed Illustrative of the dream logic of surrealist novels, Nadja, Hopscotch, or Leonora Carringtons Hearing Trumpet. All in all, the result is essential Ducornet, obscure and extravagant. This space operetta shouts like Ubu Roi. Ducornet delivers a fascinating addition to her incredible practice. A Jupiter fuse against the void. Joseph Houlihan, Chicago Review of Books A winsome space picaresque in which surreality piles upon surreality. . . . A longtime master of the extraordinary sentence, Ducornet has outdone herself here, blending SFs penchant for invented jargon with her own queer linguistic egalitarianism. . . . in a primordial soup of possibility. This slender book captivates with its ferocious curiosity, quick wit, and ultimately tender generosity. Carried along by the bumptious rollick of its language, this tale is full of sound and fury, signifying literally everything." Kirkus, starred review Ducornet dazzles with this whirlwind jaunt through a far-future universe, told in jargon-studded prose that turns gonzo science into gleeful lyricism. . . . Ducornet remains a fantastic stylist. Publishers Weekly I loved this mind-bending little trek across the universe. Thoroughly delightful, poignant, funny, and sweet, like if Italo Calvino wrote The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in a series of pointed vignettes, its the perfect amount of quarantine-relatable loneliness and existential spiraling, combined with escapism and optimism. Its like watching a dream come true. Rachel S., Harvard Bookstore for Buzzfeed A highly literate science fiction quest narrative, a 21st-century version of Calvino's Cosmicomics. . . . Trafik is a compact singularity that explodes in a Big Bang of creativity. James Crossley, Madison Books A perfectly strange and surreal book, dreamlike and fun. Sarah Cassavant, Subtext Books Surrealism meets space opera inTrafik,Rikki Ducornets startlingly original look at a post-human and non-human pairing wandering through space while obsessed with the scattered fragments of a world they never knew. At once funny and absurd,Trafikpeers at our own time through the lens of the future to reveal what we should regret losing and what would be better gone.Brian Evenson Praise for Brightfellow: Ms. Ducornets novel about a man who cannot fathom the bottomless secret of his own existence casts a lingering spell. New York Times In tracing the shape of what is left behind, Ducornet lends dignity to the universal plight of vanished illusions. Los Angeles Times Bursting with vivid imagery, beautiful language, heartbreaking characters. . . .Ducornets tale is unique and captivating. Booklist A portrait of a surreal community that defies easy categorization. . . . An endless delight at the sentence level. Kirkus Ducornet has written the oddest of varsity novels, one that anchors its charming caprice, philosophical fancy, and thriller-like pace to the psychological horror that lurks just beyond childhood innocence. Publishers Weekly Praise for Rikki Ducornet: Ducornet is a novelist of ambition and scope. The New York Times Linguistically explosive. . . . One of the most interesting American writers around. The Nation Pick up a book by the award-winning Ducornet, and you know it will be startling, elegant, and perfectly formed. Library Journal Storytelling that enchants the senses. The Boston Globe Ducornet is a writer of extraordinary power, in whose books rigor and imagination (her watchwords) perform with the grace and daring of high-wire acrobats. BOMB Ducornets is a world of surfaces so rich and textured that notions of meaning and interpretation are subsumed under a lush and seductive prose that eventually inhabits readers minds. The Millions [R]eveals strangeness in the most basic circumstances of life, flooding them in new light. Kenyon Review Ducornet is a mad maestro of words. Seattle Weekly Writer, poet, and artist Ducornet does things with words most authors would never even dream of. Mens Journal "Rikki Ducornet is a magic sensualist, a writer's writer, a master of language, a unique voice." Amy Tan It is Rikki Ducornets magic to be able to coax an entire universerestless beyond imagining, a universe of rock and flame, whose nature is incandescenceout of the modest and often grim contours of one mans life. Kathryn Davis Netsuke comes at the summit of Rikki Ducornets passionate, caring, and accomplished career. Its readers will pick up pages of painful beauty and calamitous memory, and their focus will be like a burning glass; its examination of a ruinous sexual life is as delicate and sharp as a surgeon's knife. And the rendering The rendering is as good as it gets. William Gass Rikki Ducornet can create an unsettling, dreamlike beauty out of any subject. In the heady mix of her fiction, everything becomes potently suggestive, resonant, fascinating. She exposes lifes harshest truths with a mesmeric delicacy and holds her readers spellbound. Joanna Scott Rikki Ducornet is imagination's emissary to this mundane world. Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books

Author Bio

Rikki Ducornet is a transdisciplinary artist. Her work is animated by an interest in nature, Eros, tyranny and the transcendent capacities of the creative imagination. She is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and artist, and her fiction has been translated into fifteen languages. Her art has been exhibited internationally, most recently with Amnesty Internationals traveling exhibit I Welcome, focused on the refugee crisis. She has received numerous fellowships and awards including an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bard College Arts and Letters Award, the Prix Guerlain, a Critics Choice Award, and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Her novel The Jade Cabinet was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.