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The Word Exchange

The Word Exchange

by Alena Graedon (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2014

    $3.31
Synopsis

A literary adventure for booklovers, a dystopian thriller about the digital age and a love story set in a world threatened by the disappearance of language.

PRINT IS DEAD
LONG LIVE PRINT

Imagine a world in which books, libraries and newspapers are things of the past. A world in which we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but have become so intuitive as to hail taxis before we leave our offices and even create and sell language in a digital marketplace called the Word Exchange.

Anana Johnson works with her father, Doug, at the North American Dictionary of the English Language, and they're hard at work on the final edition that will ever be printed. Then one evening, Doug disappears and Anana discovers a single written clue: ALICE. It's a code word Doug devised to signal if he ever fell into harm's way.

Joined by Bart, her bookish colleague, Anana's search for Doug will take her into dark basement incinerator rooms, underground passages, secret meetings, and ultimately to the hallowed halls of the Oxford English Dictionary - the spiritual home of the written word.

$3.31

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 320
 Publisher: W&N
Published: 29 May 2014
ISBN 10: 0297869752
ISBN 13: 9780297869757
Book Overview: A literary adventure for booklovers, a dystopian thriller about the digital age and a love story set in a world threatened by the disappearance of language.

Media Reviews
Clever, breathless and sportively Hegelian . . . THE WORD EXCHANGE combines the jaunty energy of youngish adult fiction (boyfriend trouble, parent conflicts, peer pressure and post-collegiate jitters) with the spine-tingling chill of the science-fiction conspiracy genre -- Liesel Schillinger * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW *
Graedon's spectacular, ambitious debut explores a near-future America that's shifted almost exclusively to smart technologies, where print is only a nostalgia . . . it's as full of humanity as it is of mystery and intellectual prowess * PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, starred review *
[A] remarkable first novel, combining a vividly imagined future with the fondly remembered past . . . exquisite * BOOKLIST, starred review *
A wildly ambitious, darkly intellectual and inventive thriller about the intersection of language, technology and meaning * KIRKUS, starred review *
Alena Graedon's spectacular debut is a story for our age of 'accelerated obsolescence.' A genuinely scary and funny mystery about linguistic slippage and disturbance, it's also a moving meditation on our sometimes comic, sometimes desperate struggles to speak, and to listen, and to mean something to one another.To borrow Graedon's own invention, THE WORD EXCHANGE is 'synchronic'--a gorgeous genre mashup that offers readers the pleasures of noir, science fiction, romance and philosophy. It's an unforgettable joyride across the thin ice of language -- Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove
Imaginative, layered, and highly original, THE WORD EXCHANGE is an engagingly creepy story of technology gone wrong and a clever meditation on the enduring mysteries of language and love -- Karen Thompson Walker, author of THE AGE OF MIRACLES
Wow! This highly addictive future noir is also terrifyingly prescient. Set in a parallel New York filled with language viruses, pneumatic tubes, and heartbreak, Alena Graedon's book is luminous and haunting at every turn. I will never look at words in quite the same way-and neither will you. -- Reif Larsen, author of THE SELECTED WORKS OF T.S. SPIVET
Can you imagine a future without books, newspapers or magazines? Alena Graedon has done just that - her debut novel conjures up a scarily plausible dystopian future, where print is dead and intuitive handheld devices are the only method of communication. * THE LADY *
In Graedon's dystopian future, face-to-face interfacing is finished and even email is a fading memory; when the man working on the last-ever dictionary goes missing, his daughter sets out to find him and discovers murky anti-literate corporate forces and outposts of word-loving outlaws. * ESQUIRE MAGAZINE *
The idea of technology taking over our lives to such an extent that we can no longer function without it was an interesting premise, and one that most of us will be able to relate to. -- Louise Jones * THE BOOKBAG *
Imaginative, layered, and highly original, The Word Exchange is an engagingly creepy story of technology gone wrong and a clever meditation on the enduring mysteries of language and love. * Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Age of Miracles *
Can you imagine a future without books, newspapers or magazines? Alena Graedon has done just that - her debut novel conjures up a scarily plausible dystopian future, where print is dead and intuitive handheld devices are the only method of communication. * THE LADY *
In Graedon's dystopian future, face-to-face interfacing is finished and even email is a fading memory; when the man working on the last-ever dictionary goes missing, his daughter sets out to find him and discovers murky anti-literate corporate forces and outposts of word-loving outlaws. * ESQUIRE MAGAZINE *
Author Bio
Alena Graedon graduated from Brown in 2002 and received her MFA in 2007 from Columbia University. She worked as the Manager of Literary Awards and Membership at the PEN America Center before leaving to finishTHE WORD EXCHANGE, her first novel, with the help of fellowships at several artist colonies. Her writing has been translated into nine languages. She lives in Brooklyn.