Kudos: A Novel - Hardcover

Cusk, Rachel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1443447153 ISBN 13: 9781443447157

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2018

Synopsis

Rachel Cusk, the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of Outline and Transit, completes the transcendent literary trilogy with Kudos, a novel of unsettling power.

A woman writer visits a Europe in flux, where questions of personal and political identity are rising to the surface and the trauma of change is opening up new possibilities of loss and renewal. Within the rituals of literary culture, Faye finds the human story in disarray amid differing attitudes toward the public performance of the creative persona. She begins to identify among the people she meets a tension between truth and representation, a fissure that accrues great dramatic force as Kudos reaches a profound and beautiful climax.

In this conclusion to her groundbreaking trilogy, Cusk unflinchingly explores the nature of family and art, justice and love, and the ultimate value of suffering. She is without question one of our most important living writers.

About this title

About the Author

Rachel Cusk is the author of the critically acclaimed trilogy of Outline, Transit and Kudos. She has written three memoirs—A Life’s Work, The Last Supper and Aftermath—and several novels: Saving Agnes, winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award; The Temporary; The Country Life, which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Lucky Ones; In the Fold; Arlington Park; and The Bradshaw Variations. Cusk was twice a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. She was chosen as one of Granta’s 2003 Best of Young British Novelists. She lives in London.

Review

“Quietly staggering and intellectually entrancing . . . [Cusk’s] writing is silvery and precise . . . These novels are among the most important written in this century so far.”  (The Globe and Mail)

“A triumphant finish to an ambitious, unconventional trilogy cements Cusk’s position as one of today’s most original fiction writers. The charged delicacy of these books is underpinned by what is sure to be their durability as literature.”  (Toronto Star)

“Precise and haunting . . . Unforgettable.”  (New York Times)

“[Cusk] has achieved something both radical and beautiful . . . [Kudos is] a book about failure that is not, in itself, a failure. In fact, it is a breathtaking success.” (The New Yorker)

“Kudos achieves a kind of formal perfection. Rarely does a single word of its exceptionally polished prose seem out of place . . . Cusk has triumphed in the completion of this masterly trilogy.”  (Slate)

“With the release of Kudos, these three novels can now be appreciated―and will surely be looked back on―as one of the literary masterpieces of our time.”  (Washington Post)

“[Kudos] stayed with me long after I had finished it. Composed of a series of conversations, it is captivating and incredibly well written.”  (The Guardian)

“The exhilarating finale of Rachel Cusk’s magnificently unclassifiable trilogy of novels . . . With her typical acerbic wit, Ms Cusk skewers the pretensions of the literary world while simultaneously upholding the intrinsic value of literature―no small feat . . . A daring bonfire of hypocrisies and emotions.” (The Economist)

“Every element of the [Outline] novels conveys a strenuous sense of discipline. The effect is of watching an oracle divine fearsome and inscrutable truths from on high, then render them into stories fit for mortals . . . Mesmerizing.” (The Cut)

“Cusk commandeers reality . . . An object lesson in rigor, elegance, and fury.” (Harper's Magazine)

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1443447153
• ISBN 13: 9781443447157
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240