The Impossibly - Softcover

Hunt, Laird

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566892813 ISBN 13: 9781566892810

Publisher: Coffee House Press, 2012

Synopsis

"Innovative, comic, bizarre and beautiful, The Impossibly reads as if Donald Barthelme were channeling Alain Robbe-Grillet, Samuel Beckett, Ben Marcus and reruns of Get Smart."—Time Out New York

When the anonymous narrator botches an assignment from the clandestine organization that employs him, everyone in his life becomes a participant in his punishment. In the end, he is called out of retirement for a final assignment: to seek and identify his own assassin. This edition includes an introduction by Percival Everett, an afterword by the author, and a "lost chapter."

Called "one of the most talented young writers on the American scene today" by Paul Auster, Laird Hunt is the author of four genre-bending novels and was a finalist for the 2010 PEN Center USA Award. Born in Singapore and educated at Indiana University and the Sorbonne in Paris, Hunt has lived in Tokyo, London, The Hague, New York, and on an Indiana farm. A former press officer at the United Nations and current faculty member at the University of Denver, he now lives in Boulder, Colorado.

About this title

About the Author:

Called one of the most talented young writers on the American scene today” by Paul Auster, Laird Hunt is the author of four genre-bending novels: The Impossibly, The Exquisite, Indiana, Indiana and Ray of the Star. Born in Singapore and educated at Indiana University and The Sorbonne in Paris, Hunt has also lived in Tokyo, London, The Hague, New York City, and on an Indiana farm. A former press officer at the United Nations and current faculty member at the University of Denver, he now lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Review:

Finalist, Firecracker Alternative Book Award

"[Laird Hunt] captures the tone of Paul Auster’s City of Glass in the first few chapters, and he brings a decidedly Kafkaesque feel to the spy’s early adventures.”―Publishers Weekly

“Hunt debuts with a stylish, if opaque, noir tale about a hit man who falls in love, takes a break, and incurs the wrath of his organization. . . . The mystery runs at all levels here, and the style and situation have appeal.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“Hunt is an intellect and a great spinner of claustrophobic noir plots, and his erudite gumshoe yarn owes as much to Georges Perec and Gertrude Stein as it does to Paul Auster.”―The Believer

“For 200 pages, Hunt sustains an atmosphere of severe disorientation, packing his story with more curious and vaguely menacing strangers than a David Lynch movie. . . . The book’s many layers and difficult questions make it an ideal candidate for an adventurous book club.”―Minneapolis Star Tribune 

“The Impossibly is one of the most exciting debut novels I have ever read. . . . While most Kafka comparisons are specious and overstated, Hunt’s subtle humor, sophisticated intelligence and the graceful timbre of his prose place this novel firmly in the tradition of The Castle, as well as Nabokov’s The Eye and Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser. This is high praise indeed, but The Impossibly is a marvelous, wonderful novel.”―Review of Contemporary Fiction

“The Impossibly, Laird Hunt’s first novel, is a challenging and inventive work, alternately chilling and humorous, that breaks new ground in the world of speculative fiction. Diffuse with noir tropes stripped of their origins, it leaves the reader with a map of the complicit mind trying to deal with perversity and adversity in a violent world.”―Rain Taxi Review of Books

“From the title to the last, dreamlike passage, Hunt’s novel is a deliberate, sometimes striking conundrum, one with its origins deep in the heart of traditional genres (in particular, hardboiled detective fiction and international spy thrillers), but with ambitions that extend into knotty problems of narrative, language, and meaning."―American Book Review

“Every once in a long while, you discover a novel unlike anything else you’ve ever read. Laird Hunt’s debut is one of them. Innovative, comic, bizarre and beautiful, The Impossibly reads as if Donald Barthelme were channeling Alain Robbe-Grillet, Samuel Beckett, Ben Marcus and reruns of Get Smart.”―Time Out New York

“A fractured espionage story, John le Carré à la Borges.”―The Stranger

About this edition

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1566892813
• ISBN 13: 9781566892810
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240