The City of Folding Faces

"This weird but fulfilling voyage through an altered mind is just the right length to leave readers satisfied."—Publishers Weekly



At the mysterious research facility known only as the Casino, anyone can play Roulette, a system that pushes users’ consciousness far beyond natural human limits. But when they return to the everyday world, they struggle to function, finding their memories, their speech, and even their dreams changed beyond recognition.


Like many who have played Roulette and fallen into a state of profound dimensional dysphoria, Mara finds herself struggling to communicate with those who have not, especially her boyfriend, Arlo. As she feels him slipping away, she fights to remain connected to him and at last discovers a way to adapt to living with a divergent psyche in a linear world.

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"A hallucinatory glossolalia of futurist poetry . . . [Basu’s] uneasy confluence of technology, art, and capitalism pulls reality into new and unfamiliar shapes." — Indrapramit Das, author of The Devourers


"This is a sometimes challenging but ultimately fascinating return to classic cyberpunk that William Gibson aficionados will love."— Lucy Roehrig, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI for Library Journal



"Basu’s ability to take what we know of neurodegeneration and traumatic brain injury and reimagine it echoes the early work of Mary Doria Russell."— Bethanne Patrick for Literary Hub