Analyitics

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Gods Without Men, by Hari Kunzru

Just released in hardover (and on Kindle) yesterday.  According to Michiko Kakutani:
Hari Kunzru’s latest novel, Gods Without Men, reads like an unlikely mash-up of David Mitchell’s willfully complex 2004 novel, Cloud Atlas and Steven Spielberg’s classic 1977 U.F.O. movie, Close Encounters of a Third Kind, seasoned with some borrowings from David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo. The book is, at the same time, a wildly ambitious novel that spans centuries; a gripping thriller about a missing child; and a sort of sci-fi tale about pilgrims of various sorts being drawn to a mysterious rock formation in the desert in search of contact with aliens or some sort of higher meaning.
I look forward to getting me some!

UPDATE:  Writing for the New York Times, Douglas Coupland calls Gods Without Men "gorgeous and wise."  Unfortunately, his review is marred by a forced attempt to sketch out the countours of a new literary genre (to include Gods Without Men, Cloud Atlas and The Hours), which he calls "Translit." 

2 comments:

  1. thank goodness, the coffers have been too dry lately!

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  2. This book sounds fascinating.

    Along the lines of "translit" (ugh), Salon's a positive review links the novel to "American magical thinking," esp. when it comes to religion, and compares the novel to Pynchon and Delillo.

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