Description

Coffee House Press, paperback

Publication Date: January 10, 2023

Publisher Marketing: Where do authentic connections occur in a digitized age? What dehumanizing assumptions–political, economic, social, personal–shape everyday life? How does one “interpret the world while also living in it?” Anna Moschovakis, winner of the 2021 International Booker Prize for her translation of David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black, ponders such questions in this intimate, enigmatic novel. Participation tells a love story that eschews gender binaries as two members of a reading group begin to connect outside of the syllabus. Moschovakis wields language with mathematical yet poetic precision and employs surrealist, Mir-esque imagery to point toward the absurdity of abiding by capitalism’s mores in an era of environmental disaster. Using surprising shifts in voice and incorporating partially redacted news reports, text messages, emails, and picture postcards, Participation imagines liberated relationships and philosophical inquiry in an ecological dystopia.