Superfan
A Novel
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- Förbeställning
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- Förväntas 3 feb. 2026
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- 139,00 kr
Utgivarens beskrivning
From National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree Jenny Tinghui Zhang, a novel about a pop idol and his superfan, whose stories shockingly collide
Freshman Minnie is adrift at college in Austin, Texas, when she discovers a boy band called HOURglass and the online forums that worship them. She especially loves Halo, whose sharp edges feel somehow familiar. After a brief romance goes painfully awry, Minnie pours everything into her new fandom, clinging to each livestream and bonding with other fans online. But when a scandal threatens to expose Halo to harm, Minnie decides that she is the only one who can save him.
Except Halo’s secret is darker than anything the tabloids could imagine. Before he was a superstar heartthrob, he was Eason: a high school dropout haunted by a tragic accident. When he is recruited for HOURglass, it feels like a chance to become someone else. And when he is onstage in front of his fans, he can almost forget the horrors of his past--until one of those very fans threatens to destroy everything.
Dazzling, entrancing, and deeply heartfelt, Superfan is about fandom in all its magic and its terror, and the extreme lengths to which we go to rid ourselves of loneliness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Zhang (Four Treasures of the Sky) explores the line between fandom and idol worship in her sharp sophomore outing. Minnie, a college freshman, feels isolated until she discovers the boy band HOURglass, who draw inspiration from K-pop. She obsessively follows the group online and connects there with fellow fans, finding a reprieve from her real-world failures. Zhang alternates Minnie's story with that of band member Eason, the group's "bad boy," who's harboring a dark secret involving his older sister, Faye, which the group's Svengali-like mastermind, a record label executive known as The Duke, uses as blackmail to keep him in line. The plot verges on melodrama, whether in revelations about Faye via flashback or a present-day attack on another HOURglass member by a rabid fan. Still, Zhang draws intriguing connections between Minnie and Eason by showing how they each become increasingly dependent on HOURglasses's fame, as Minnie derives satisfaction from her deepening parasocial relationship with the band, while Eason comes to rely on fans' adoration, to the point that he finds it "increasingly difficult to leave the stage." It's a perceptive take on the limits to a relationship between fan and star.
