Description

On a remote island in the Aegean, a billionaire named Morel is building a refuge for the super-rich from the chaos consuming the outside world. When a struggling journalist is hired to work on the spectacular exhibition that will inaugurate this exclusive new utopia, he jumps at the chance to restart a career that stopped with the death of his wife. Yet he comes to suspect that beneath the dazzling surface of this collaboration between art and power run currents of real violence. As the inauguration of the Floating World approaches, he finds it more difficult to distinguish dream from reality. Who is excluded from this paradise? On what traumas is it being constructed, and are they poised to return? And can art redeem us from the death of our loved ones and the end of the world? A dystopia, satire and Bildungsroman, steeped in ancient mythology and contemporary politics, The Floating World is a deeply moving, often hilarious and beautifully written debut novel that heralds an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.

Publisher Review

‘An immersing, crystalline debut novel that reaches out to a world in crisis; elegant, emotional, deeply serious and gloriously witty.’

– Deborah Levy, author of August Blue ‘Startlingly imaginative, The Floating World is at times like the work of a J. G. Ballard for the 2020s, at others like the reincarnation of Italo Calvino. Eastham is as deft with a finely observed comic riff as he is with a heart-stoppingly lovely description of a city, a gesture, a connection. In his hands, what could have been a satire of art-world hubris becomes something so attuned to the world – its wonder and its clear and present danger… I don’t want to sound mawkish, but ultimately it’s a novel about our boundless potential to connect, and what we should ultimately value.’

– Luke Kennard, author of Black Bag ‘The world – that is, the protagonist – floats through opaque settings of fateful money, violent strangers and ghostly love; a tender, guilty work of wish-fulfillment and the most valuable kind of first novel, documenting the author’s struggle to reconcile right action with the egomaniac work of writing books.’

– Nell Zink, author of Sister Europe ‘An astute satire about the absurdities of the artworld, a compelling mystery and an elegy, The Floating World is unputdownable: frequently funny, often moving and always intriguing.’

– Jennifer Higgie, author of The Other Side ‘By turns witty and lyrical, The Floating World is a compelling aftermath novel, in which the world is eventually forced into a shape that’s monstrous enough to express a man’s grief.’

– Barney Norris, author of Undercurrent ‘Novels like this don’t come around very often. Ben Eastham’s The Floating World is transporting in every sense of the word. A meditation on the brutal and beautiful nexus where art and money meet, an odyssey of grief and discovery, a rallying cry against the people ruining the world from those that are trying to change it. It’s a towering achievement.’

– Dominic Amarena, author of I Want Everything ‘Channelling Adolfo Bioy Casares, Eastham carries a vision of art’s complicity with power to its endgame. If Art Basel is now globalized, then so is Minneapolis. Looping civilization back to end where it began, in Athens, he proposes that the only counterforce to fascism is love.’

– Tom McCarthy, author of The Making of Incarnation ‘The Imaginary Museum is the most inventive writing on art I’ve read in a long while. By inviting us into his made-up institution, Ben Eastham opens up a space for reflection on how contemporary art helps us make sense of ourselves and the world around us. This is a brilliant book – a museum in the form of a parable.’

– Lauren Elkin, author of Art Monsters (praise for The Imaginary Museum) ‘Ben Eastham is a critic with intelligence, verve and delirious wit, and in this essay he makes a lovely experiment with art criticism: proposing contemporary art as a charmed space for us all to explore a radical and comical subjectivity – flaneurs freed from the illusion of connoisseurship.’

– Adam Thirlwell, author of The Future Future (praise for The Imaginary Museum) ‘The Imaginary Museum is a brilliantly funny and enlightening wander through the often-baffling corridors of the contemporary art world. I loved it.’

– Jennifer Higgie, author of The Other Side (praise for The Imaginary Museum) ‘A splendid journey through the brilliant thought-constellations that deftly gather shape and luminosity in the mind of a young art critic.’

– Chloe Aridjis, author of Sea Monsters (praise for The Imaginary Museum)