Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

Geoff Dyer is the author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi and three previous novels, as well as nine non-fiction books. Dyer has won the Somerset Maugham Prize, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, a Lannan Literary Award, the International Center of Photography's 2006 Infinity Award for writing on photography and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' E.M. Forster Award. In 2009 he was named GQ's Writer of the Year. He won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012 and was a finalist in 1998. In 2015 he received a Windham Campbell Prize for non-fiction. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages. He currently lives in Los Angeles where he is Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California.

Title: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

Author: Dyer, Geoff

ISBN: 9781782115144

Binding:

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd

Publication Date: 2015-03-05

Number of Pages: 304

Weight: 0.2132 kg

Dazzling and peculiar . . . A prodigious display of virtuosity. -- Jan Morris * * Guardian * *
Engaging and funny . . . Dyer is a witty and concise observer of landscapes: social, geographical and emotional . . . [his] eccentric charm and barbed perceptiveness will hook you to the end. -- Tim Teeman * * The Times * *
Delivered with laconic wit and an evocative sense of place, Dyer's effortlessly readable prose is shot through with psychological insight, truth and an eye for travelogue detail. -- Alan Chadwick * * Metro * *
Dyer is more than a cult writer; he's a virus, invading your system. You look at things differently, embracing the idiosyncratic, keeping the obvious at bay . . . vintage Dyer, painfully funny, slyly observant, brilliant, full of wild misery. -- Lee Langley * * Spectator * *
Dyer is a smart, witty writer..., extraordinarily reflective, perceptive and funny...as well as a fine prose stylist. He's a keen commentator on the ironies of contemporary life from the very first page. -- Lionel Shriver * * Financial Times * *
Geoff Dyer is a true original -- one of those rare voices in contemporary literature that never ceases to surprise, disturb and delight. Risky, breathtakingly candid, intellectual, cool, outrageous, laconic and sometimes shocking, Geoff Dyer is a must-read for our confused and perplexing times -- WILLIAM BOYD
Jeff in Venice is a love song to the pleasures of the phenomenal world, very fast and very funny . . . [Death in Varanasi] is Dyer at his very best: philosophical, astute, unstructured, oscillating between surface and depth, between the casual and the universal. -- Jonathan Gibbs * * Independent * *
Jeff in Venice is serious fiction; learned travelogue; funny, arch and sad; a cynic's ascent into redemptive love and a stoner's descent into 'Gone-Native' madness. It drips with Geoff Dyer's derelict luminosity. -- DAVID MITCHELL
Geoff Dyer is one of my favourite of all contemporary writers. I love his sense of the absurd, his pessimism mixed with robust good cheer, his beautifully crafted sentences, his jokes and his intelligence. Jeff in Venice is a sad, funny, lyrical, furious story of an ordinary man's momentary redemption and decline. Please take the time to read it and fall under Dyer's spell. -- ALAIN DE BOTTON
Dyer is very funny, in both senses - sort of like a post-modern Kingsley Amis. His writing is acute and bad tempered in the great British tradition, and his prose is the equal of anyone in the country. A national treasure. -- ZADIE SMITH
A raucous delight. Jeff in Venice is truly surprising - very funny, full of nerve, gutsy and delicious. Venice will never be the same again! -- MICHAEL ONDAATJE
A haunting, if frequently hilarious, meditation on love and art, life and music, death and bananas, all reflected and refracted in the twinned mirror pools of Venice and Varanasi. I loved this book. -- JOSHUA FERRIS
Riveting. I love this book. Moments of wit, humanity, and intelligence are to be found on every page here. Dyer can write as beautifully as Lawrence and Proust. I don't ever want to be without his brilliant mind to turn to. -- NADEEM ASLAM
Dyer's ingenious linking of these contrasting narratives is indicative of his intelligence and stylistic grace, and his ability to evoke atmosphere with impressive clarity is magical. Both novellas ask trenchant philosophical questions, include moments of irresistible humor and offer arresting observations about art and human nature. . . . A work of exceptional resonance. [Starred review.] * * Publishers Weekly * *
A riddle of a novel wrapped in a two part travelogue about losing oneself . . . the writing is discursive and full of bleak, often funny observations about the more jaded intersections of art and life. -- Jennifer Higgie * * Frieze * *
Entrancing . . . [Dyer] is a writer who resists categorization, who is constantly morphing from one thing to another...it takes talent to pull off a career like that, and Dyer has plenty of talent. His work is illusory yet real, funny but serious . . . [Jeff in Venice] is a haunted - and haunting - book. -- Alex Bilmes * * GQ * *
Raw and descriptive - this is a truly original piece of writing. * * Tatler * *
A haunted - and haunting - book. * * GQ * *
Cleverly-penned . . . affirms Dyer's place as one of Britain's most witty and original writers; the lively prose, colourful characters and at times extremely poignant descriptions making for both a riveting and really quite brilliant read. -- Camilla Pia * * List * *
Smart, provocative, often very funny, but ultimately deeply sobering, Jeff in Venice is an early contender for the most original, and the cleverest, novel of the year. -- Mick Brown * * Daiy Telegraph * *
Dyer's prose always has a hint of intimacy...Memory, language and writing aare all intricately and emotionally woven. -- Mark Crees * * Times Literary Supplement * *

You'll be hooked by a playful, fictive intelligence that flickers over every page.

-- David Lovely * * Waterstone's Books Quarterly * *
(T)he joy of his writing at its best lies in not knowing what's coming next, and in the fluent way it throws irreverence and transport together with a confessional ease that reflects the spirit of the age... In the weeks since I devoured Jeff in Venice, I don't think a day has passed without my thinking back to it. -- Pico Iyer * * The New York Times Book Review * *
The last 20 pages approach magnificence: a virtuosic melding of style and repertoire that come together as a sort of yogic one. -- Ted Weesner Jr. * * The Boston Globe * *
The English writer Geoff Dyer delights in producing books that are unique, like keys. -- James Wood * * The New Yorker * *
Beguiling. * * Metro * *
Filled with shimmering apparitions. * * Observer * *
Witty, observant, unexpected. * * Sunday Telegraph * *
Quite mad, it can be read poolside, roadside or mountainside: wherever you are, you'll be Lake-side. * * The Observer * *
Erudite and often very funny. * * The Telegraph * *
Rarely less than brilliant. * * The Guardian * *
Dyer is compared to Proust, Lawrence and Kingsley Amis. The praise is deserved . . . i hadn't read such a fully realised piece of fiction for ages. * * Evening Standard * *
By marrying fiction with travelogue, serious confessional with comedy, Dyer produces a heady literary package. * * Independent * *
Dyer at his very best . . . philosophical, astute, unstructured, oscillating between surface and depth, between the casual and the universal. -- Jonathan Gibb * * Independent * *
A book about desire in all its manifestations: the desire for sensation and escape, to get out of one's own skin and to become somebody else, whether through love, intoxication or spiritual transformation. Smart, provocative, often very funny, but ultimately deeply sobering, Jeff in Venice is an early contender for the most original, and the cleverest, novel of the year * * Telegraph * *
This is a bellini of a novel, sparkling and intoxicating, in which the hero concludes that something - maybe everything - has to give * * GQ * *
Rarely less than brilliant * * Guardian * *