From one of this generation's most talked about young writers comes a novel about failed relationships, drug-induced depression, marriage, and death

At some point, maybe twenty minutes after he'd begun refreshing Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Gmail in a continuous cycle - with an ongoing, affectless, humorless realisation that his day 'was over' - he noticed with confusion, having thought it was early morning, that it was 4:46PM

Taipei is an ode - or lament - to the way we live now. Following Paul from New York, where he comically navigates Manhattan's art and literary scenes, to Taipei, Taiwan, where he confronts his family's roots, we see one relationship fail, while another is born on the internet and blooms into an unexpected wedding in Las Vegas.

From one of this generation's most talked-about and enigmatic writers comes a deeply personal and uncompromising novel about memory, love, and what it means to be alive.

"Lin's writing is reminiscent of early Douglas Coupland, or early Bret Easton Ellis, but there is also something going on here that is more profoundly peculiar, even Beckettian . . . deliciously odd" - * Guardian *

"

[A] deadpan literary trickster

"Deeply smart, funny, and heads-over-heels dedicated" - * New York Magazine *

"Lin captures certain qualities of contemporary life better than many writers in part because he dispenses with so much that is expected of current fiction" - * London Review of Books *

"[Tao Lin's] relentless, near-autistic focus on the surfaces of social interaction belongs to a literary lineage that includes not just the frequently cited Bret Easton Ellis but also Alain Robbe-Grillet, Rudy Wurlitzer, and Dennis Cooper" - * The Village Voice *

"Such a committed engagement with emotional failure risks literary disappointment, but it is through Lin's willingness to take that risk that we see him for what he is: a daring, urgent voice for a malfunctioning age" - * Times Literary Supplement *

"Taipei brilliantly portrays the life of many young men - drifting and difficult to reach, bound only to technology and drugs" - * Financial Times *

"Like all true styles this is infectious stuff, permeating not only writing, but thought itself" - * Daily Telegraph *

"Taipei is undoubtedly an important signpost for the way the next generation is going to think and act in the world to come" - * Big Issue *

"His strengths, and appeal, lie in the untrammelled paths he makes where others are too fearful to tread" - * The National *

"With a neat line in offbeat analogy, Lin's writing is more intricate, even beautiful, than you might expect, and as a portrait of an internet-shaped psyche, it's unmatched" - * Observer *

"A wry, clever look at the way we live now, written in a wonderfully inventive, up-itself Manhattan style" - * The Times *

"Like a piece of contemporary art . . . smuggled in among the Tumblr updates and Ritalin dosages are moments of sudden clarity, tenderly and poetically rendered, in which Lin captures perfectly the unmoored inadequacy we feel as we struggle to place ourselves in the world." - * Literary Review *