Leaving the Atocha Station: Ben Lerner - Tapa blanda

"A remarkable first novel ... Gales of laughter howl through Leaving the Atocha Station. It's packed full of gags and page-long one-liners itemising the narrator's ghostly immunity to normal human relations ... After the attacks, with the election of Zapatero imminent, an activist tells Adam that he has been "up all night protesting and partying. I asked if those were the same things, protesting and partying." The question is not asked maliciously and the book never feels like satire. What is does feel like is intensely and unusually brilliant. Beyond that, I don't know quite what it is and I like it all the more for that." --Geoff Dyer, Observer

"Funny, uplifting and moving... Lerner s genius is to put into words that universal, often-lost period when most young people are commitment-free but weighed down with a sense of the nascent self... We finish this book feeling a little cleverer, and a little happier." --Financial Times

"Linguistically, Leaving The Atocha Station is one of the most remarkable books I have read this year. Lerner is a poet, but this isn t a poetic novel , by which I mean the kind of work where mellifluous description acts as a kind of literary toupée. Lerner s poetry manifests itself in elegantly stilted grammar, in contradiction and self-cancellation, in painfully self-aware self-mirroring and especially in misunderstanding ... The camber of Adam s thoughts is conveyed with astonishing grace"-Scotsman

"A thoroughly first-rate first go at a novel: properly cutting edge, searingly clever and dark and beautiful"-Dazed & Confused

"One of the most exciting aspects of Leaving the Atocha Station is seeing a dedicated poet write a novel; that addresses poetry s limitations ... Leaving the Atocha Station is partly a description of the inner territory of a new kind of American artist: cold, lazy, artificial, yet oddly honourable given the extreme honesty and thoroughness of his self-scrutiny. One half-wonders if, in the future, this model will loom as large in the minds of young artists as the Romantics and the modernists do in ours"-Sheila Heti, London Review of Books

"The sharpest and funniest novel I read this year"-Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

"Leaving the Atocha Station made a big impression on me ... the character of the poet is so twisted and vulnerable, and his musings on life and art so original and wise, that this short book is a tremendous journey for the reader. And it made me laugh."-James Meek, Sunday Herald

"Stunning... a book you can enjoy on several levels ... At its core, it s a deeply serious novel that almost by stealth makes you think afresh about all those late night imponderables to do with art and the meaning of life."-Metro

"This arrestingly clever debut novel blends lyricism, wit and emotional self-laceration." --Sunday Telegraph

This book stood out from everything else I read this year. --'Books of the Year' chosen by Catherine O'Flynn, Observer

"Linguistically, Leaving The Atocha Station is one of the most remarkable books I have read this year. Lerner is a poet, but this isn t a poetic novel , by which I mean the kind of work where mellifluous description acts as a kind of literary toupée. Lerner s poetry manifests itself in elegantly stilted grammar, in contradiction and self-cancellation, in painfully self-aware self-mirroring and especially in misunderstanding ... The camber of Adam s thoughts is conveyed with astonishing grace"-Scotsman

"A thoroughly first-rate first go at a novel: properly cutting edge, searingly clever and dark and beautiful"-Dazed & Confused

"One of the most exciting aspects of Leaving the Atocha Station is seeing a dedicated poet wri --Sunday Telegraph

A dazzling first novel that does not flinch from difficulty but asks questions of language and art and what we can do with them. --'Books of the Year', Amy Sackville, The Big Issue

"Linguistically, Leaving The Atocha Station is one of the most remarkable books I have read this year. Lerner is a poet, but this isn t a poetic novel , by which I mean the kind of work where mellifluous description acts as a kind of literary toupée. Lerner s poetry manifests itself in elegantly stilted grammar, in contradiction and self-cancellation, in painfully self-aware self-mirroring and especially in misunderstanding ... The camber of Adam s thoughts is conveyed with astonishing grace"-Scotsman

"A thoroughly first-rate first go at a novel: properly cutting edge, searingly clever and dark and beautiful"-Dazed & Confused

"One of the most exciting aspects of Leaving the Atocha Station is seeing a dedicated poet write a novel; that addresses poetry s limitations ... Leaving the Atocha Station is partly a description of the inner territory of a new kind of American artist: cold, lazy, artificial, yet oddly honourable given the extreme honesty and thoroughness of his self-scrutiny. One half-wonders if, in the future, this model will loom as large in the minds of young artists as the Romantics and the modernists do in ours"-Sheila Heti, London Review of Books

"The sharpest and funniest novel I read this year"-Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

"Leaving the Atocha Station made a big impression on me ... the character of the poet is so twisted and vulnerable, and his musings on life and art so original and wise, that this short book is a tremendous journey for the reader. And it made me laugh."-James Meek, Sunday Herald

"Stunning... a book you can enjoy on several levels ... At its core, it s a deeply serious novel that almost by stealth makes you think afresh about all those late night imponderables to do with art and the meaning of life."-Metro

"This arrestingly clever debut novel blends lyricism, wit and emotional self-laceration." --Sunday Telegraph

Born in Kansas in 1979, BEN LERNER is the author of three books of poetry, The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar in Spain, and the recipient of a Howard Foundation Fellowship. In 2011 he became the first American to win the Munster State Prize for International Poetry. In 2013 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches in the writing program at Brooklyn College. This is his first novel.