Discover the Penguin books that shaped us

Generation A

byDouglas Coupland

Format:

PaperbackEbook

Buy the book from:

AmazonOpens in a new tabBlackwellsOpens in a new tabBookshop.orgOpens in a new tabFoylesOpens in a new tabHiveOpens in a new tabWaterstonesOpens in a new tabWHSmithOpens in a new tab
In the near future bees are extinct - until five unconnected individuals, in different parts of the world, are stung. Immediately snatched up by ominous figures in hazmat suits, interrogated searately in neutral Ikea-like chambers, and then released as 15-minute-celebrities into a world driven almost entirely by the internet, these five unforgettable people endure a barrage of unusual and highly 21st-century circumstances. A charismatic scientist with dubious motives eventually brings the quintet together, and their shared experience unites them in a way they could never have imagined.

Generation A mirrors the structure of 1991's Generation X as it champions the act of reading and storytelling as one of the few defences we still have against the constant bombardment of the senses in a digital world. Like much of Coupland's writing, it occupies the perplexing hinterland between optimism about the future and everyday, apocalyptic paranoia, and is his most ambitious and entertaining novel to date.

[A] visionary author . . . rock'n'roll yet deadly serious, a caustic social commentator and delineator of the near future . . . He's caught midway between technophilia and technophobia . . . there's no better place to be for a contemporary prophet

The Sunday Times

About Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland (pronounced KOHP-lend) (born 30 December 1961) is a Canadian writer, designer and visual artist. His first novel was the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. Since then, Coupland has written twelve more novels, which have been published in most languages. He has written and performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company and is a columnist for the Financial Times. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, e-flux, Dis and Vice. In 2000, after a decade of generating web graphics, Coupland amplified his visual art production and has recently had two separate museum retrospectives: 'Everywhere Is Anywhere Is Anything Is Everything' at the Royal Vancouver Art Gallery, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art; and 'Bit Rot' at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam and Villa Stuck in Munich. In 2015 and 2016, Coupland was an artist-in-residence in the Paris Google Cultural Institute.
Details
  • Imprint: Windmill Books
  • ISBN: 9780099537380
  • Length: 384 pages
  • Dimensions: 198mm x 24mm x 129mm
  • Weight: 266g
  • Price: £9.99
All editions