Rejection
‘A thrill for the sickos among us’ JIA TOLENTINO
‘Utterly inimitable’ RAVEN LEILANI
‘Unrelentingly brutal and gut-bustingly funny and spares no one’ CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
‘Symbiotically serious and funny’ MEGAN NOLAN
‘A wild, brutally funny chain of stories about people coming apart’ JACK EDWARDS
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION
An audacious and original novel-in-stories following a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection throws their lives and relationships into chaos.
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the thorniest problems of modern life: sex, relationships, identity and the internet.
We see a tryhard male feminist's passionate allyship turn to a furious and debilitating nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that his feminism isn’t getting him laid; a young woman’s unrequited crush spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of both her sense of self and her group chat; and witness a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship lead to a life-upending mistake. As these characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways that our delusions can warp our desire for connection.
Written with the accomplished authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a losers’ manifesto, Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte radically redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society and oneself.
A Book of the Year in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New Yorker, NPR, Time Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Electric Literature and more.
‘A book of mad, madcap genius’ GARTH GREENWELL
‘Tulathimutte is a big talent’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
‘Blistering … takes a magnifying glass to the mind in the internet age’ VOGUE
‘There’s a volatile thrill to the writing … snortingly funny’ WALL STREET JOURNAL
‘Obsessively readable, acerbic, Foster Wallace–inflected’ VANITY FAIR
‘A master comedian with a virtuoso prose style … audacious, original and highly disturbing’ NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
Tony Tulathimutte is the author of Private Citizens and Rejection. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, n +1, The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Times. The recipient of an O. Henry Award and a Whiting Award, he runs the writing class CRIT in Brooklyn.