Happiness and Love

Zingy . . . Told in a single long , savage and hilarious paragraph, Happiness and Love can be gulped in one delicious go.

Financial Times

A gorgeous book on being a hater, and I inhaled this in one sitting.

Stylist

Breathless, damning, funny, elegiac . . . The achievement here is unquestionably substantial. Dubno has managed to write a work of high style that is also a document of real emotion.

Madeline Cash, The London Magazine

Zeitgeist and timeless, cynical but not soulless, Dubno’s propulsive debut is for lovers of Thomas Bernhard, art over theory, and anyone who has ever wondered “What the hell am I doing here?” Fabulous!

Melissa Broder, author of Milk Fed

Exceptionally funny and entertaining.

Katy Hessel, author of The Story of Art Without Men

As observant as a sniper, and just as ruthless, Zoe Dubno in Happiness and Love pulls off an unlikely yet ultimately very successful literary metempsychosis. Bernhard's fierce sarcasm and disappointment resonate very clearly in her voice; despite the distance that separates his 1980s Vienna from her contemporary New York, Dubno shows us – at times comically, at times despairingly – that the superficiality, hypocrisy, and flatness never change.

Vincenzo Latronico, author of Perfection

Zoe Dubno examines character and human relations in the same way an art critic looks at a painting. Digging deeper and deeper into the thoughts behind thoughts, feelings behind feelings and questioning everything, Happiness and Love is an ecstatic performance of heightened perception.

Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick

In Happiness and Love, Zoe Dubno viciously and delightfully skewers the vapid people – the neo-bohemians of the social media age – who masquerade their privilege as creativity. It is bracing and funny and fiercely clever, a first novel of extraordinary confidence and profoundly entertaining wickedness.

Orlando Whitfield, Nero-award listed author of All that Glitters

I loved this astute and hilarious skewering of New York’s psuedy cultural elite. Intelligent, relentless, nasty and fun, Happiness and Love is energising, vital and a total joy to read.

Francesca Reece, author of Voyeur