Synopses & Reviews
The fiction debut from the LA Times bestselling author of What We See When We Read—a novel of ideas set in a mysterious institute in the desert.
What if there were a place you could go that would hand you a replica of something even better than the original? What would you copy? How would it change you?
In the middle of the shifting sands of a Middle Eastern desert, near an unnamed metropolis, there is an Institute where various Fellows come to undertake projects of great significance. Our sort-of hero, Percy Frobisher, arrives one day to undertake a project, only once he arrives, surrounded by the simulated environment of the glass-enclosed dome of the Institute and the various Fellows focused on the minutiae of their great works, Percy’s mind goes completely blank. When he spills something on his uniform—a major faux pas—he learns about a mysterious shop where you can take something, utter the command “same same,” and receive a replica even better than the original. Imagining a world in which simulacra have as much value as the real—so much so that any distinction between the two vanishes, and even language seeks to reproduce meaning through ever more degraded copies of itself—Peter Mendelsund has crafted a deeply unsettling novel about what it means to exist and to create…and a future that may not be far off.
Synopsis
In the shifting sands of the desert, near an unnamed metropolis, there is an institute where various fellows come to undertake projects of great significance. But when our sort-of hero, Percy Frobisher, arrives, surrounded by the simulated environment of the glass-enclosed dome of the Institute, his mind goes completely blank. When he spills something on his uniform--a major faux pas--he learns about a mysterious shop where you can take something, utter the command "same same," and receive a replica even better than the original. Imagining a world in which simulacra have as much value as the real--so much so that any distinction between the two vanishes, and even language seeks to reproduce meaning through ever more degraded copies of itself--Peter Mendelsund has crafted a deeply unsettling novel about what it means to exist and to create . . . and a future that may not be far off.
About the Author
Peter Mendelsund is a designer and writer. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and two daughters.