Broken Monsters is finally, finally out in America on the 16th September and it’s been getting some great reviews already, just in time for the kick-off of the book tour.
I’ll be doing events from 16-23rd September at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, Book Soup in LA, Anderson’s in Naperville (Chicago), The Public Pool in Detroit, Brooklyn Writer’s Festival Housing Works in NYC and Porter Square Books in Boston.
I’ll be reading, signing, showing off research photographs, and answering really hard questions.
Click here for the full schedule. Bring your friends, tell everyone you know!
And about those cool reviews:
“Beukes masterfully pulls us through the harrowing story, partly because she’s brilliant with plot and character — and partly because she knows how to draw corollaries where you might never expect them. We see how abstract art, murder, and viral humiliation videos are versions of the same impulse. Each is an expression of selfhood that has been utterly mutilated by the process of making private parts of ourselves visible to the masses.
…This is a novel that will take you to some dark places — philosophically and narratively — but it also has the guts to suggest that hope is not lost.” – Annalee Newitz, io9.com
“Lauren Beukes’ captivating “Broken Monsters” defies the standard tropes of the serial killer genre to become a thoroughly modern, supernatural thriller set against the backdrop of a crumbling American city (Detroit) attempting to piece itself back together.
One wouldn’t expect to find rich commentary on the nature of representation or the dangers of growing up in an era of Snapchat or revenge porn slipped into a taut and sometimes terrifying page turner. But Beukes swings it, offering thought-provoking takes on peddling misfortune and “truth.”
“Broken Monsters” holds up a mirror to those who rabidly hit refresh in search of more dehumanizing gore and those who wish to be a star in the atrocity exhibition. – Karina Waclawiak, LA Times
“South African novelist Lauren Beukes has one twisted imagination… a remarkable tour of Motor City in all its devastated grandeur. Along the way, we glimpse the complexity, resilience and hope of its people, even in the midst of mounting dread inspired by events both natural and supernatural.” – Chicago Tribune Printer’s Row, interview by Kevin Nance
“[Beukes imbues] her story with shrewd social commentary, dark humor, and a dusting of metaphysical wonder…[BROKEN MONSTERS] delivers something smarter and sharper than your average splatter paperback. Gore is easy after all; gutsy writing is a lot harder.” – Entertainment Weekly
And one from Australia, off the back of my recent tour of that fair continent…
Broken Monsters is “the most original book in the genre I have read this year. As with Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, reading might render you breathless and even bewildered, but not in a bad way.
In whatever genre she writes, Beukes appears interested in how damaged people survive amid the ruins of whatever civilisation they find themselves in… what lifts Beukes’ fiction is her sharp wit and nifty way with words, as well as her characters’ resilience and humanity.” – Jane Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald
And lastly (hey, for now) an interview I did with The Reading Room
“The book is about broken people and how we deal with that, and the monsters of ambition and pride and fear and I wanted to treat that with compassion. The killer does terrible, terrible things, but what drives him is ultimately very human – that desire to be recognized, to be seen, to feel known.” Read full interview at The Reading Room.