The High-Rise Diver
Sharmila Cohen
(Translator)
Description
For readers of The Handmaid's Tale, The Circle, and Brave New World comes a chilling and distressingly plausible dystopia which creates a world in which performance is everything and one woman's failure to achieve becomes another's downfall.
Riva is a "high-rise diver," a top athlete with millions of fans, and a perfectly functioning human on all levels. Suddenly she rebels, breaking her contract and refusing to train. Cameras are everywhere in her world, but she doesn't know her every move is being watched by Hitomi, the psychologist tasked with reining Riva back in. Unquestionably loyal to the system, Hitomi's own life is at stake: should she fail to deliver, she will be banned to the "peripheries," the filthy outskirts of society. For readers of The Handmaid's Tale, The Circle, and Brave New World, this chilling dystopia constructs a world uncomfortably close to our own, in which performance is everything.Product Details
| Publisher | World Editions |
| Publish Date | March 02, 2021 |
| Pages | 288 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781642860764 |
| Dimensions | 8.4 X 5.4 X 1.0 inches | 0.8 pounds |
About the Author
JULIA VON LUCADOU was born in Heidelberg in 1982. She studied film and theater at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and Victoria University of Wellington and earned her PhD in Film Studies in 2015. Lucadou worked as both an assistant director and a television editor prior to writing The High-Rise Diver, her debut novel, which was nominated for the Swiss Book Prize in 2018. She splits her time between Biel, New York, and Cologne.
Originally from New York, SHARMILA COHEN came to Berlin in 2011 as a Fulbright Scholar to complete an experimental translation project with local poets. She now divides her time between both cities. Cohen is an award-winning writer and German-to-English translator who has translated the works of several leading German-language authors. Her work has been featured in publications such as BOMB and Harpers, and her projects span from poetry and literary fiction to crime and children's stories.
Reviews
"The High-Rise Diver by Julia von Lucadou describes the world of today from an inevitable future, evoking a city deeply entrenched in surveillance, social media, and influencer culture. The High-Rise Diver is a clear and clamoring warning bell, a classic Zen koan kick in the head. Beautiful and strange and scary, the book is a call to stick our heads above the water and breathe fresh air."--Rain Taxi
"With shades of Brave New World and 1984 alongside current concerns about social status and job security being determined by continuous electronic assessment, The High-Rise Diver portrays a chillingly credible world with no place for individuality, with a poignant depiction by von Lucadou of the compassion and humanity that nevertheless refuses to be extinguished." --Herald Scotland
"A searing work of speculative fiction." --Kirkus Reviews
"Piercing prose propels the story forward...in Julia von Lucadou's cerebral dystopian novel." --Foreword Reviews
"As much as The High-Rise Diver presents a cautionary tale of a society in thrall to corporate and surveillance capitalism, it's also a distressing portrait of a woman, bereft of familial and physical affection, searching for meaning in a cold, antiseptic world." --Locus Mag
"Deftly crafted by novelist Julia von Lucadou and expertly translated into English for an American readership by Sharmila Cohen, The High-Rise Diver is an inherently riveting read." --Midwest Book Review
"The High-Rise Diver is chillingly beautiful dissection of perfected capitalism. Lucadou creates a horribly convincing world where every aspect of existence has been monetised. In a taut, delicate narrative an implacable and disinterested cruelty faces the human ache for tenderness, mercy, contact and affection." --A.L. Kennedy
"Straightforward and cool, the author's short, unadorned sentences reveal how the promise of salvation through greater efficiency, growth, and individual luck actually represses, stifles, and destroys the very essence of life: spontaneity, pain, dirt, emotion, poetry." --Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"A glistening novel about the blockade of welfare that is closing in on the entire world." --Clemens Setz, author of Indigo
"What makes Julia von Lucadou's novel so impressive is the accuracy with which she describes this high-gloss, modern, but by no means completely fictional world. Every detail is so precise that, lurking beneath the flawlessness of the text, the central theme of perfidious self-optimization seems to always be present." --Süddeutsche Zeitung
"Julia von Lucadou's science fiction is close. Against the backdrop of the gleaming images used to portray this Orwellian-style city-state, the tragic moments of direct human encounters take on a dimension of clever criticism." --Spiegel Online
"The author's precision in depicting the process of decay, later marked by delusional episodes, is the explosive force behind this text. It meticulously states the consequences of a society governed by totalitarian control and optimization. Welcome to neo-liberalism 4.0!" --Berliner Zeitung
"In literary and discursive terms, the most exciting debut of the autumn season." --Kulturnews
"With clear analysis and precision, Julia von Lucadou describes the merciless surveillance of the world of big data." --Inforadio
"The High-Rise Diver is a highly intelligent, prescient, and entertaining novel about our brave new world of voluntary surveillance. An outstanding debut!" --WDR
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