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Bad Eminence

James Greer

$39.99

Hardback

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English
And Other Stories
01 November 2022
Meet Vanessa Salomon, a privileged and misanthropic French-American translator hailing from a wealthy Parisian family. Her twin sister is a famous movie star, which Vanessa resents deeply and daily. The only man Vanessa ever loved recently killed himself by jumping off the roof of her building. It's a full life.

Vanessa has just started working on an English translation of a titillating, experimental thriller by a dead author when she's offered a more prominent gig: translating the latest book by an Extremely Famous French Writer who is not in any way based on Michel Houellebecq. As soon as she agrees to meet this writer, however, her other, more obscure project begins to fight back-leading Vanessa down into a literary hell of traps and con games and sadism and doppelgangers and mystic visions and strange assignations and, finally, the secret of life itself.

Peppered with ""sponsored content"" providing cocktail recipes utilising a brand of liquor imported by the film director Steven Soderbergh, and with a cameo from the actress Juno Temple, Bad Eminence is at once an old-school literary satire in the mode of Vladimir Nabokov as well as a jolly thumb in the eyes of contemporary screen-life and digital celebrity.

'Strong writing and shrewd perceptions prevail, backed by wry humour, compelling stumblebum characters, a true-blue louche atmosphere, and arresting insights into the dream of art, be it literature or rock and roll.' -Donna Seaman, Booklist

'A Nabokovian thriller, light-hearted and caustic, which is also a subtle reflection on all forms of manipulation, be they criminal, corporate, amorous or . . . novelistic.' - ric Chevillard, Le Monde

'Greer's lyrical erudition is both serious work and seriously fun . . . proof that there remain new places to go, both on paper and in the known universe.' -Publishers Weekly

'Greer does a superb job of transcending conventional genrefication, bringing something fresh to contemporary literature . . . A very enjoyable read [with a] highly inventive structure, full of eccentricities...' - Library Journal
By:  
Imprint:   And Other Stories
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 198mm,  Width: 129mm, 
ISBN:   9781913505349
ISBN 10:   1913505340
Pages:   224
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

James Greer is a novelist, screenwriter, and musician. His previous books include the novels Artificial Light and The Failure, and the story collection Everything Flows. As a screenwriter, he's written or cowritten written several movies, including Max Keeble's Big Move, Just My Luck, The Spy Next Door, and Unsane. He's also played in a number of not-very-well known indie-rock bands. He tends to move around a lot, so it wouldn't be helpful to say where he lives, because he probably doesn't anymore.

Reviews for Bad Eminence

Praise for Bad Eminence: 'James Greer has always been a novelist I would hock my skills set to measure up against, but even matched against his prior coups, Bad Eminence is unspeakably exciting. Its grace and hilarity and brains and foolproof read on Frenchness and I don't even know what else made my hands shake.' Dennis Cooper ---- 'I take exception to the characterization of my hair as difficult , as my hair is in fact perfect, which I can prove in a court of law. Everything else James wrote is exactly as it happened, to the best of my memory.' Juno Temple, prodigiously talented actress with perfect hair ---- 'With eye and ear and tongue - and oh brother, what a tongue! - James Greer is the leading Renaissance Man for our current and possibly terminal Dark Ages.' Joshua Cohen ---- 'This is a work of lacerating style that shook my faith in the tangible world. It preys upon the real in capricious ways, like so much of the best fiction, toying with the reader's memories until we're not sure what we see, or what we have seen. James Greer is a circus-master of great humour, malevolence and allusion, a fabricator of eerie truths. It's terrifying to enter his world.' Michael Lesslie


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