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OVAL

Elvia Wilk

Bizarre weather. Unprecedented economic disparity. Artists employed by corporations as consultants. And the ultimate work of art: Oval, a pill that increases generosity. This unforgettable debut novel asks questions of empathy and power on every scale - from bodies to bureaucracies - to create an unsettling portrait of the future of Berlin.

In the near future, Berlin's real estate is being flipped in the name of "sustainability," only to make the city even more unaffordable; artists are employed by corporations as consultants; and the weather is acting strange. In search of affordable housing, Anja and Louis move into a community on an artificial mountain, The Berg - yet another "eco-friendly" initiative run by a corporation called Finster. They're offered a home rent-free in exchange for keeping quiet about the seriously malfunctioning infrastructure of the experimental house. But when Louis returns home from his mother's funeral in America, Anja is convinced he has changed. He seems to be in denial of his grief and newly idealistic, consumed by a secret project at the NGO where he works. Anja is horrified when she discovers what Louis has invented: a pill called Oval that temporarily rewires the user's brain to be more generous. Louis believes that if he can introduce the drug into the Berlin club scene, he can finally remedy the income disparity that has made Berlin so unlivable. Oval is a fascinating portrait of the unbalanced relationships that shape our world, as well as a prescient warning of what the future may hold. Elvia Wilk is a writer and editor living in New York and Berlin. She contributes to publications like Frieze, Artforum, Metropolis, Mousse, Flash Art, Art in America, and Die Zeit. She is currently a contributing editor at Rhizome and e-flux journal.

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Book Published 2019-06-01 by Soft Skull

Comments

So good, so dark, so funny, so cruelly smart about where we are and where we're going. This book is a petri dish growing a new strain of heartbreak. I'm sick with love for it.

Elvia Wilk's debut novel, Oval, exquisitely depicts the exhaustion of trying to maintain your footing among the reality distortions of 21st-century companies... [Wilk] is a master of detail.

A high-minded, intelligent novel... Oval strikes a note that will vibrate with Wilk's contemporaries.

As a social comedy of modern relationships and gentrifying Berlin, Elvia Wilk's debut is exquisitely funny and exquisitely well observed. But it also has something weirder spliced into its DNA: fragments of the future that transform this story into a fabulous biopunk hybrid that's not quite like anything else I've ever read."

Elvia Wilk will take part in the 19th edition of the international literature festival berlin (www.literaturfestival.com), which will take place from September 11th to 21st, 2019. Elvia Wilk will take part in the Automatic Writing Special where she will present her novel "Oval".

The book feints toward an Ottessa Moshfeghstyle ennui, the kind of tragic vision that disguises itself as satire. But Oval has a warm center in Anja, who is friendlier, more approachable, less alienating and alienated than the typical Moshfegh heroine... [Anja] is finely observed and solid, capable of both banter and feeling... When Wilk examines social behavior, her attention snags in all the right places... Like Oedipus or Othello, characters in Oval can neither alter their destiny nor anticipate its shape. Yet Wilk entwines a classical sensibility with biological determinism - she almost suggests that humans have reached the final phase of a natural decomposition process, like cells programmed to grow and then atrophy

Oval is a sharp weapon, both a provocation and a reckoning. ...for anyone whose livelihood depends on engaging with the creative industry on a daily basis, it's a call to arms...

Trading in the Emotional Economy: On Elvia Wilk's "Oval" by Michael Friedrich Read more...

Elvia Wilk and Leah Dieterich in conversation Read more...

Wilk's debut novel is a strange, vivid thought experiment. ...Oval is a book of plot twists and turns that roots itself in Anja's relatable, practical soul, and scientific passion for inquiry.

Oval is a must-read for anyone cynical about the way in which we're constantly being marketed to, and Wilk's deftness as she takes on our current societal woes is awe-inspiring. This is the perfect send-up of the world we live in, a reminder that dystopia is all around us - and that it's being sold with the promise of making everything better.

Oval is one for the sci-fi nerds out there who want to get their hands on some legit brilliant literature.

. . . [S]ort of just what life is like now, Oval depicts life in the Anthropocene, but a little worse. For fans of Gary Shteyngart and Nell Zink.

This debut novel from arts, architecture, and technology writer Elvia Wilk is filled with the things she knows best: arts, architecture, and technology... Oval tackles a futuristic, but eerily familiar kind of corporate gentrification in Berlin under the guise of sustainability that sends our central artists-turned-cogs to live in a rent-free home on a manmade mountain.

Everything is work - mourning, clubbing, reading your partner's moods. And everything is a scam - plants that become buildings, jobs that become consultancies, apps that become jobs. With astonishing emotional accuracy, Oval records what it feels like to hover between two poles.

Deeply weird and unsettlingly hilarious, Wilk's dystopian debut pushes the grim absurdities of the present just a little bit further, into a near future that's too plausible for comfort ... The book's true surprise is its startling emotional kick: If the circumstances are heightened to extremes, the relationships - with their delicate dynamics - are all too real. Witty and alarming, a satire with (unexpected) heart. Read more...

J.G. Ballard meets William Gibson meets Jeff VanderMeer. Oval is an up-to-the-minute story about the twilight zones of corporate design, aesthetics, pharmaceuticals, and bioengineering, where there's nothing consultants won't break in the quest for 'innovation.' What could possibly go wrong? Find out in Elvia Wilk's crisp and stylish debut book.

Soft Skull has a reputation for provocative, striking, and genre-bending prose, and Oval is no exception.

Wonderfully clever and beguiling. The circle may be absolute, but the oval remains restless and bursts with potential.

A fascinating near-future exploration of relationships, sustainability, and power. An extraordinarily accomplished debut novel.

Elvia Wilk's Oval is a marvel. At the core of this seductive, acute, superbly-contemporary update of mid-period J.G. Ballard lies a deep-beating, deep-dreaming heart.

With wit and precision, Elvia Wilk pinpoints the moment where neoliberalism metastasizes into something far more sinister.

Great to see Lit Hub's excerpt of OVAL live today, and also included in their Daily newsletter. Read more...

Elvia Wilk's novel Oval is like an ever-expanding sphere... It would be beautiful satire if it didn't all ring so true.