Corey Fah Does Social Mobility
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD 2024
LONGLISTED FOR THE NOTA BENE PRIZE 2024
A radical, joyful novel from Goldsmiths Prize-winning author Isabel Waidner
In flight from a traumatic rural childhood, Corey Fah has come to earth in a one-bed council flat in the capital. Trapped, with partner Drew, in the limited world which late capitalism has allotted them, they are modestly happy but practically futureless.
Until, one day, Corey is offered a life-changing prize from out of the blue. Things are looking up – but as Corey soon finds, it’s one thing winning a prize in life’s lottery, and quite another being able to collect it – especially if you are a queer, working class immigrant with all of History working against you.
Corey Fah’s pursuit of the elusive prize – and an escape from precarity – is a whirlwind, epic journey through the streets of the city and the time-loops of the past, written with boundless energy and invention.
Social mobility, in this radiant, radical novel, is never a simple step up the ladder, but a hopeful leap into the void.
Praise for Corey Fah Does Social Mobility:
'A head-spinning, mind-bending roller coaster of fun, horror, and subversion' Kamila Shamsie
'A radical, rebellious novel . . . [Waidner] brings a fresh lens to our troubled world' Observer
[The] writer everyone is talking about . . . and deservedly so' Bernardine Evaristo
'Filled with wickedly sharp commentary and well-aimed digs at hypocrisy and injustice' Times Literary Supplement
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Astrophysics and a mysterious literary prize propel the darkly funny and very strange latest from Waidner (Sterling Karat Gold). Corey Fah has won the 2024 Fictionalisation of Social Evils award in their unnamed city, known only as the "international capital," where the language is inflected with Czech and Polish terms (their flat is in the Sociální Estate, and their partner's name is Drew Szumski) and a "swampy part of town" is called Florida Rot. Unfortunately, Corey is unable to collect the prize money without the trophy, a hovering "neon beige" object they failed to obtain after the ceremony. Later, Drew tries to help find the trophy, and ends up going through a wormhole into an alternate reality consisting of a scene from a sexed-up Disney movie. When Drew returns, they convince Corey, who's still desperate for the money, to go on the bizarre TV talk show St Orton Gets to the Bottom of It. Sean, the host, claims to have time-traveled from the 1960s, and he invites guests who believe they have found a wormhole. After it turns out Sean might know something about the trophy, Corey's madcap and peculiar search grows increasingly thrilling. Waidner's queer Kafkaesque romp is great fun. Agents: Katie Cacouris and Tracy Bohan, Wylie Agency.
