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Jessica Anthony is the author of The Convalescent (McSweeney's/Grove), a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and Chopsticks (Razorbill), a multimedia novel created in collaboration with designer Rodrigo Corral. Chopsticks, was an Amazon Book of the Month and won App of the Year. Anthony' short stories can be found in Best New American Voices, Best American Nonrequired Reading, McSweeney's, The Idaho Review and elsewhere. She is the inaugural winner of McSweeney's Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, and has recently received fellowships from the Creative Capital Foundation for Innovative Literature, the Bogliasco Foundation in Bogliasco, Italy, and the Maine Arts Commission. Anthony has been a butcher in Alaska, an unlicensed masseuse in Poland, a secretary in San Francisco. In 2017, while writing Enter the Aardvark, her next novel, Anthony was working as Bridge Guard, guarding the Maria Valeria Bridge between Storovo, Slovakia and Esztergom, Hungary. Normally, she lives in Maine and teaches at Bates College.
If you are anything like me, you will end up loving the actual aardvark...and relish the world of taxidermy that Anthony brings to life. Enter the Aardvark sizzles with uproarious fun, from its snout to the sting in its tale. * INDEPENDENT * [An] ingenious political satire...The perfect tonic for testing times...deliciously astute, fresh and terminally funny. * GUARDIAN * Spry, slim, clever...the inventiveness is impressive and the story has heart. * THE SUNDAY TIMES * What begins as a topical takedown of the American political system deepens into a hugely enjoyable romp through history...Madcap and satirical without ever being flippant, Anthony's novel is totally unrealistic yet completely truthful. * OBSERVER * Fresh, astute and mouthwateringly sharp, this is a rare thing; a political satire that tugs on the heartstrings in unconventional ways. * IRISH TIMES * 'Part 21st-century political satire, part unexpectedly affecting 19th-century love story...It's every bit as strange as it sounds, and yet somehow it works: there's a pleasing symmetry to the parallel plots, and Anthony's writing is evocative enough to snare the imagination.' * DAILY MAIL * 'Old, dead creature brings down flash, vain senator... Out in front as the most fizzing and amusing novel of the year.' * STRONG WORDS magazine * 'Jessica Anthony's Enter the Aardvark was exactly the smart, funny and poignant pick-me-up that I needed...Anthony entwines her two narrative threads with seamless precision...Riotously entertaining' * i-news * Sharp, inventive and very funny, it's an entertainingly bizarre political satire. * TATLER * 'A joyfully weird, compulsive political satire' * MAIL ON SUNDAY * Inventive and darkly funny...as Anthony connects characters from today with those from 19th-century England, she offers an original and unsettling lens through which to view male power as it has evolved over time. * TIME * 'Weird, wonderful, and very much of the moment, Enter the Aardvark is a landmark political novel of the Trump era.' * ESQUIRE.COM Best Books of 2020 * The scope of Anthony's imagination can sometimes beggar belief. What a mind she has. As the narrative twists between the past and the present, it seems like anything could happen at any time....a hilariously poisonous evisceration of the cowardly, disingenuous politicians running rampant through Trump's Washington. * CULTUREFLY * 'Sometimes, a paragraph near the start of a novel is so perfect and funny that you read it over and over, laugh every time, and know you're in for a treat...I'm loving it. Completely insane but utterly hilarious' * JOHN BOYNE * 'A curious, surprising and moving story about two men who- to put it one way - become involved with an aardvark and thereby condemn themselves to death.' * THE CRITIC *
