The Delivery

The Delivery
Peter Mendelsund
RRP:
NZ$ 65.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 52.00
Hardback
h198 x 129mm - 304pg
13 Apr 2021 US
International import eta 7-19 days
9780374600426
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
Countries go wrong sometimes, and sometimes the luckier citizens of those countries have a chance to escape and seek refuge in another country-a country that might itself be in the process of going wrong. In the bustling indifference of an unnamed city, one such citizen finds himself trapped working for a company that makes its money dispatching an army of undocumented refugees to bring the well-off men and women of this confounding metropolis their dinners. Whatever he might have been at home, this citizen is now a Delivery Boy: a member of a new and invisible working class, pedaling his power-assist bike through traffic, hoping for a decent tip and a five-star rating. He is decidedly a Delivery Boy; sometimes he even feels like a Delivery Baby; certainly he' s not yet a Delivery Man, though he' ll have to "man up" if he wants to impress N. -the aloof dispatcher who sends him his orders and helps him with his English. Can our hero avoid the wrath of his Supervisor, get the girl, and escape his indentured servitude? Can someone in his predicament ever have a happy ending? Who gets to decide? And who' s telling this story, anyway? Harrowing and hilarious, Peter Mendelsund' s The Delivery is a fable for and about our times: an exploration of the ways language and commerce unite and isolate every one of us, both native and immigrant.
"A timely exploration of alienation and power . . . Brilliant . . . As the delivery boy acquires this new tongue and awareness, the paragraphs grow longer and shapelier . . . An elegant, if somber, parable. " --Kirkus"Peter Mendelsund' s The Delivery is not only truly original, and gorgeously written, it shines a light on a person, a population, generally invisible to all but themselves, which is among a novel' s more profound purposes. It' s a remarkable book. " --Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours"Reading The Delivery is an experience like no other, as though you are listening to a recital that becomes a kind of rich and sentient dream. It is a novel of coldness and warmth, loneliness and consanguinity, and ultimately, great freedom. " --Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy"The infrastructure that delivers us anything we want, whenever we want it, is the work of millions of anonymous hands, millions of people--mostly unseen, mostly unthanked--who pop up and then disappear. In a quick, staccato style, Peter Mendelsund' s haunting fable mirrors these movements, building and building to a startlingly full portrait a world that we too often let flash us by. " --Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sontag: Her Life and Work"An intricate fugue, a trickle that gradually builds into a torrent, Mendelsund' s astonishing novel is as much a meditation on the capacities of narrative itself--its unanticipated deliverances--as a subtle reflection on the contemporary migration crisis. With its resonant tale of upheaval and adaptation, precarity and solidarity, The Delivery is a parable for our age. " --Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora
Peter Mendelsund is a novelist and graphic designer. He is the former associate art director of Alfred A. Knopf, where his work was described by The Wall Street Journal as "the most instantly recognizable and iconic in contemporary fiction. " Mendelsund is the author of three books about design: What We See When We Read, Cover, and The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature. His debut novel, Same, Same, was published in 2019.
Status: Indent title, imported to order
ISBN-13: 9780374600426
Published: 13 Apr 2021
Published In: United States
Imprint: Farrar Straus Giroux
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Format: Hardback
Height: 198mm
Width: 129mm
Weight: 300g
Pages: 304

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