Synopses & Reviews
In the declining Weimar Republic, Egon Loeser works as a stage designer for New Expressionist theatre. His hero is the greatest set designer of the 17th century, Adriano Lavicini, who devised the so-called Teleportation Device for the whisking of actors from one scene to another - a miracle, until the thing malfunctioned, causing numerous deaths and perhaps summoning the devil himself. Apolitical in a dangerous time, sex-driven in a dry spell, Loeser leaves the tired scene in Berlin in pursuit of the lubricious Adele Hitler (no relation), who couldn't care less about him, heading first to Paris and then to Los Angeles, where he finds his entire tired Berlin social circle reconstituted in exile, under the patronage of a hack writer and his possibly philandering wife. He also finds himself uncomfortably close to a string of murders at CalTech, where a physicist, assisted by Adele herself, is trying to develop a device for honest-to-God teleportation.Following his breathtaking debut, Boxer, Beetle, Ned Beauman raises the stakes, creating in The Teleportation Accident a marvelous mash-up of historical fiction, LA noir, science fiction, and satire. Here are sluts and scam artists, ghosts and ancient dinosaur-men, all wrapped up in one page-turning plot. Beauman is a writer of audacity and style; his second novel proves him a star on the rise.
Synopsis
“Funny and startlingly inventive . . . Beauman is undoubtedly a writer of prodigious talent, and there are enough ideas [here] . . . to fill myriad lesser novels.” —Financial Times
Synopsis
When you havent had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that could ever happen.
If youre living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isnt.
But thats no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theaters of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: Was it really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, Renaissance set designer Adriano Lavicini, creator of the so-called Teleportation Device? And why is it that a handsome, clever, modest guy like him cant—just once in a while—get himself laid?
About the Author
Ned Beauman was born in 1985 and studied philosophy at the University of Cambridge. His first novel, Boxer, Beetle, won a National Jewish Book Award and the Writers Guild of Great Britain Award, and was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Guardian First Book Award. He has recently lived in Berlin, London, Istanbul, and New York.