Reality and Other Stories

A Kirkus Reviews Best Short Fiction of 2021 Selection Ghost stories for the digital age by the Booker Prize–longlisted author of The Wall.In 2017, inspired in part by Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, the acclaimed English novelist John Lanchester published a ghost story in The New Yorker. "Signal," an eerie story of contemporary life and the perils of technology, was a sensation among readers―and since then Lanchester has written several more.Reality and Other Stories gathers the best of these, taking readers to an uncanny world familiar to fans of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. Household gizmos with a mind of their own. Mysterious cell-phone calls from unknown numbers. Reality TV shows and the creeping suspicion that none of this is real…Reality and Other Stories is a book of disquiet that captures the severe disconnection and distraction of our time.

Michael Schaub, NPR.org

"A smart book, scary as hell, and also a whole lot of fun…[Reality and Other Stories is] as endlessly entertaining as it is legitimately frightening."

Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"Ingenious…[Lanchester's stories] send a shiver down the spine."

Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

"John Lanchester's collection of tech-y ghost stories seems especially appealing right now...The eight tales in Lanchester's Reality and Other Stories are meant to entertain, to take you out of yourself for a space―and that they deftly do."

Vanessa Hua, New York Times Book Review

"This intriguing debut collection grapples with technology and its illusion of convenience, choice and escape. Lanchester, a British novelist and journalist, has a sharp eye for social class and setting in his ghost stories for the digital age."

Guardian

"Brisk, vinegar-sharp satires that horrify and amuse in equal measure."

Times Literary Supplement (UK)

"A mind-bending collection about the multifaceted scariness of the way we live now."

Financial Times (UK)

"Very clever, very modern 'entertainments.'"

Booklist

"Across these immensely enjoyable and varied tales, Lanchester embraces the camp silliness of the gothic sensibility, while also making astute observations about our ever-developing digital reality."

From the Back Cover

Praise for John Lanchester:"A writer as funny as he is humane."– Keith Gessen"Book by book, John Lanchester proves himself one of our necessary writers, equal in wit, good nature, and fundamental sanity to whatever insane thing the new century throws at us."– Garth Risk Hallberg"John Lanchester writes with such clarity and effectiveness that his prose is a pleasure I always look forward to."– Philip Pullman"All of John Lanchester’s work is of a piece―he wants his readers to see our moment better, and then do something about it."– Kim Stanley Robinson

About the Author

John Lanchester  is the author of five novels, including The Debt to Pleasure and Capital. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He lives in London.

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