'Mordant, torrential, incantatory, Bolano-esque, Perec-ian, and just so explosively written that I had to stop and shake the language-shrapnel from my hair and wipe it off my eyeglasses so I could keep reading' Jonathan Lethem

'Full of clever postmodern flourishes, self-referential winks and riotous set pieces. It's funny, smart and beautifully written' Alex Preston, The Guardian


'I absolutely adored Dead Souls. Reading it felt like overhearing the most exhilarating, funny, mean conversation imaginable--which is to say it made me extremely happy and I dreaded it ending' Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation

'I first heard about Solomon Wiese on a bright, blustery day on the South Bank...'

Later that evening, at the bar of the Travelodge near Waterloo Bridge, our unnamed narrator will encounter that very same Solomon Wiese.

In a conversation that lasts until morning, he will hear Solomon Wiese's story of his spectacular fall from grace.

A story about a scandal that has shaken the literary world and an accusation of serial plagiarism.

A story about childhood encounters with nothingness and a friend's descent into psychosis; about conspiracies and poetry cults; about a love affair with a woman carrying a signpost and the death of an old poet.

A story about a retreat to the East Anglian countryside and plans for a triumphant return to the capital, through the theft of poems, illegal war profits and faked social media accounts - plans in which our unnamed narrator discovers he is obscurely implicated...

A story that will take the entire night - and the remainder of the novel - to tell.

'Reading Dead Souls feels like discovering the British Bolaño, and not just for the gleeful dismantling of the cultural ego: the restless, searching sensibility; the precise tuning-in to contradictory voices. I haven't been so excited by a debut novel in a long time' Luke Kennard, author of The Transition


'Elegant, ambitious, very serious and very funny' Katharine Kilalea, author of OK, Mr. Field


'Sublime, legendary, delightfully unhinged. A rare and brilliant pleasure' Nicolette Polek, author of Imaginary Museums

"

Full of clever postmodern flourishes, self-referential winks and riotous set pieces. It's funny, smart and beautifully written.

"Riviere artfully blends metaphysics, existentialism, ideas of originality, and plagiarism, plus an enticing dose of history and memoir in this captivating read." - Reader's Digest, A Best Fiction Book of the Year

"Riviere's provocative debut novel ... Calls to mind Thomas Bernhard not only for its form but its rhythm and cadence" - Publishers Weekly

"A mesmeric (and often mordantly funny) read. Fans of the great Austrian curmudgeon Thomas Bernhard will recognise the style. I also thought of other modern masters who capture the cataract of consciousness in serpentine syntax: László Krasznahorkai; Javier Marías; even WG Sebald. And, of course, this shaggy-dog story about the delusions and misadventures of obscure, self-mythologising poets cannot help but evoke the Roberto Bolaño of The Savage Detectives ... The sheer brio and tumbling intelligence of Riviere's narration lift almost every page. Once you catch the spuming surf of his prose you'll want to ride the wave to the shore. He's wickedly sharp about the pious deceits, and self-deceptions, that fuel the culture industry like oil" - The Arts Desk

"One of the wittiest, sharpest, cruellest critiques of literary culture I've ever read. No summary can convey the hypnotic effect of Riviere's relentless prose. An astute, wildly original novel that talks trash about everyone whose success galls you. And there's nothing quite so delicious as that" - Independent

"Whip-smart. Maddening. Weirdly hypnotic. I loved it" - Telegraph

"Entirely original ... I laughed loud and often at the author's exuberance" - Financial Times

"100 pages in, I was thinking, "Why bother with anything else? Why bother with lunch?" This is a brilliant and brilliantly entertaining novel. The writing is merciless; the rage is genuine. The cumulative effect is exhilarating: Riviere has turned paranoid pub talk and midnight doubts into a prose poem of laceration" - Guardian

"A boozy, raging, hilarious and surreal recounting that keeps you enraptured" - AnOther Magazine

"With sinuous, ornate prose and riotous set pieces, it's funny, smart and beautifully written" - Observer

"John Cheever wrote, 'one never asks is it a novel? One asks is it interesting', and Dead Souls is definitely interesting ... Funny, smart ... with less vinegar and vitriol than Bernhard, more wryness and lashings of irony" - Spectator

"Intoxicating ... Stepping through Dead Souls' funhouse mirror, we see the current normal reality is as absurd and empty as an email. Yet, running through the novel is a skein of hope" - The i

"Very funny" - Sunday Times

"Imagine Thomas Bernhard without the moral seriousness ... This a clever, funny book, an atheistic cousin to The Third Policeman" - TLS

"Very, very funny. A comedy of immense depth. Wildly original" - Sunday Times