Quicksand - Hardcover

"What would happen if some genius were able to unite the high-wattage storytelling exuberance of Kurt Vonnegut, the combustive glee of Walt Whitman, and the reality-smashing despair of Franz Kafka? Impossibly, Steve Toltz has done just that, turning out a new masterpiece that is at once an old-fashioned page-turner, a tragicomic lament for the digital age, and an aching howl at the intractable existential dilemmas of our poor species. "Quicksand" is the sort of book that refuses to sleep between its covers on your nightstand; it is its own blazing, intricate, hysterically surreal universe, big and brilliant enough to swallow your own."--Stefan Merrill Block, bestselling author of The Story of Forgetting and The Storm at the Door

"Steve Toltz is a verbal magician and lunatic storyteller. Every page of this novel bursts with ideas and humor and pathos and incisive riffs that perfectly express the grand absurdities of the irrational universe, along with the smaller ones of a very particular friendship. "Quicksand" is the work of a writer in full command of his many outsized gifts, not least of which is his humanity."--Teddy Wayne, Whiting Award-winning author of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

"[A] narrative so brilliant, so fizzing with lucidity and comedyand horror and hard-nosed empathy...The real parent of 2008's "A Fractionof the Whole" and this new work is Saul Bellow...There is a superfluityof smarts on display. Characters back talk each other like Chinese table tennischampions; apercus fly like sparks from the angle-grinder of the authorialimagination. Still, there is a feeling edge to all this dazzle, a sense thatthe torrential flow of wit is a cover for fear of the void. The hollowestbabble is better than the endless silence that will follow when death pressesmute....
[Like] Philip Roth at his angriest and funniest..."Quicksand" isa similarly high-octane read; it recalls and updates the tradition ofJewish-American fiction in the same spirit as Gary Shteyngart or JonathanSafran Foer....
Aldo Benjamin's fateis as complicated as his character.... What is heroic about him is that he neverbecomes a hero...He is one of those rare characters who will live on in ourcollective literary imagination." "--The Saturday Paper" (Australia)

"There are more lines of genius on one page of "Quicksand "than in the entirety of many very respectable novels."--Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed

"The energy, the hairpin turns, the narrative crashes, the stomach churning ascents and trashed taboos: what a joy to surrender oneself to a writer of such prodigious talent." --Peter Carey, Booker Prize-winning author of Amnesia

"Steve Toltz possesses an imagination that knows no limits. His work is mordant, prophetic and very funny. He is a true original."--Patrick McGrath

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR "QUICKSAND"
"Steve Toltz writes with a singular, propulsive energy, with sentences and characters that rise off the page with a force that leaves you almost breathless. There is more heart, and joy and compassion and hard-earned wisdom in Quicksand than seems possible for a single novel; it is life, literature at its fullest. --Dinaw Mengestu, award-winning author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and All Our Names"

What would happen if some genius were able to unite the high-wattage storytelling exuberance of Kurt Vonnegut, the combustive glee of Walt Whitman, and the reality-smashing despair of Franz Kafka? Impossibly, Steve Toltz has done just that, turning out a new masterpiece that is at once an old-fashioned page-turner, a tragicomic lament for the digital age, and an aching howl at the intractable existential dilemmas of our poor species. "Quicksand" is the sort of book that refuses to sleep between its covers on your nightstand; it is its own blazing, intricate, hysterically surreal universe, big and brilliant enough to swallow your own. --Stefan Merrill Block, bestselling author of The Story of Forgetting and The Storm at the Door"

There are more lines of genius on one page of "Quicksand "than in the entirety of many very respectable novels. --Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed"

"Steve Toltz's "Quicksand"--narrated by Aldo and Liam, two epic Aussie screw-ups and lifelong best friends is one of the smartest, funniest, angriest novels I have ever read. But it's also a surprisingly touching meditation on friendship and family, on art and God, on law-breaking and law enforcement A brilliant piece of fiction, from a novelist who so clearly sees the outsized pleasures and terrors of our troubled time. "--Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England and The Happiest People in the World"

A daring, brilliant new novel from Man Booker Prize finalist Steve Toltz, for fans of Dave Eggers, Martin Amis, and David Foster Wallace: a fearlessly funny, outrageously inventive dark comedy about two lifelong friends.

Liam is a struggling writer and a failing cop. Aldo, his best friend and muse, is a haplessly criminal entrepreneur with an uncanny knack for disaster. As Aldo’s luck worsens, Liam is inspired to base his next book on his best friend’s exponential misfortunes and hopeless quest to win back his one great love: his ex-wife, Stella. What begins as an attempt to make sense of Aldo’s mishaps spirals into a profound story of faith and friendship.

With the same originality and buoyancy that catapulted his first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, onto prize lists around the world—including shortlists for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award—Steve Toltz has created a rousing, hysterically funny but unapologetically dark satire about fate, faith, friendship, and the artist’s obligation to his muse. Sharp, witty, kinetic, and utterly engrossing, Quicksand is a subversive portrait of twenty-first-century society in all its hypocrisy and absurdity.