Wittgenstein Jr. - Hardcover

LONGLISTED FOR THE JERWOOD FICTION UNCOVERED PRIZE 2015

NOMINATED FOR THE 2015 FOLIO PRIZE

'Iyer's work proposes a visibly different sort of British literature to that which dominates the discourse...The author has set an alternative path for himself, producing books you can read in an afternoon but think about for a year.' - The Independent

"Iyer is an author who rejects the parochialism and timidity we often associate with British novelists in favour of an ugly grapple with the big themes." - The Spectator

"Curiously profound, strangely touching, and, best of all, deeply insulting." - The Observer

"Lars Iyer...has been redefining the existential anti-hero for several years now, combining fiction and philosophy with great wit and invention." -TLS

"Paints a richly grotesque panorama of Britain, from Manchester to Middlesex." - The Independent

"Uproarious." --The New York Times

'Elegaic and lulling... clever satire on academic life that is also a love letter to the world of ideas.' - 5 stars in the Daily Telegraph

'Superbly done ... Iyer wins on laughs.' - The Guardian

"The novel makes you feel a little sad, as any true story of first love would, and, as any book by a true philosopher would, gives you a lot of food for thought." - The Independent on Sunday

'An endlessly interesting subject, and Iyer does it justice in Wittgenstein Jr, a lightly and wittily written novel... the depiction is very close to the historical Wittgenstein: the idiosyncrasies and intensities, the agonies, above all the mysticism, all beautifully and funnily drawn in.' - --Quadrapheme

'Meanwhile, the novel is in crisis and I intend that as a compliment. In other words, the books that are asking what a novel might be ...[including] Lars Iyer's Wittgenstein Jr are by far the best.' - Gaby Wood's Best Books of 2014, The Telegraph

'A twitchy philosophy professor arrives at Cambridge on the brink of either total enlightenment or a mental breakdown. His new students, a hapless bunch of over-privileged boozers and junkies, turn up to class to observe their tutor's rambling, paranoid disintegration. All ends well though, with an unexpected spot of non-theoretical romance.' - --Simon Armstrong, buyer for the Tate Bookshop

Lars Iyer returns with his most accessible novel yet: Wittgenstein Jr. is the nickname Peters and his gang of fellow Philosophy undergrads give to their lecturer; a brooding, complicated, melancholic academic who is determined to make them grasp the very essence of philosophical thought. But the students are too busy getting drunk on lethal homemade cocktails, falling in and out of love, and coming to terms with the life waiting for them after Cambridge. As Wittgenstein Jr. becomes more withdrawn and depressive, the students come to realise how much he needs them.