The Floating World - by Ben Eastham (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A cautionary tale of a young, newly widowed art critic who goes to work for a mysterious billionaire determined to build a geodesic-domed paradise to shelter the rich.

For fans of novels of Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection and Blake Butler's Molly

On a remote island in the Aegean, Morel, a billionaire, is constructing a utopian community beneath a giant geodesic dome. The "Floating World" is advertised as a refuge for only the wealthiest people from the crises engulfing the planet.

Our protagonist is offered a job working on the spectacular art exhibition that will inaugurate this closed society. Recognizing that this is a branding exercise for ethically dubious property development, he is nonetheless attracted by the opportunity to work with an artist he once hero-worshipped--the reclusive, semi-retired Finn Reith--and to restart a life that stopped with the loss of his wife.

At first glance, the Floating World seems like a paradise, but it soon becomes clear that all is not well beneath the shimmering dome. Why is the billionaire head of the corporation ensconced in his own residence on the far side of the island, surrounded by bodyguards? Why are the workers so reluctant to speak of their experiences? Our protagonist's gaze is distracted from these indicators of some deeper disturbance by Selima, the uncannily familiar technical director of the exhibition.

The Floating World is a dystopia and Bildungsroman, steeped in atmosphere and sparkling with intelligence, and signals the arrival of a major new talent on the fiction scene.

Review Quotes

"The world--that is, the protagonist--floats through opaque settings of fateful money, violent strangers and ghostly love; a tender, guilty work of wish-fulfillment and the most valuable kind of first novel, documenting the author's struggle to reconcile right action with the egomaniac work of writing books."
--Nell Zink, author of Sister Europe

"An immersing, crystalline debut novel that reaches out to a world in crisis;
elegant, emotional, deeply serious and gloriously witty."
--Deborah Levy, author of August Blue

"Novels like this don't come around very often. Ben Eastham's The Floating World is transporting in every sense of the word. A meditation on the brutal and beautiful nexus where art and money meet, an odyssey of grief and discovery, a rallying cry against the people ruining the world from those that are trying to change it. It's a towering achievement."
--Dominic Amarena, author of I Want Everything

"An astute satire about the absurdities of the artworld, a compelling mystery and an elegy, The Floating World is unputdownable: frequently funny, often moving and always intriguing."
--Jennifer Higgie, author of The Other Side

"Channeling Adolfo Bioy Casares, Eastham carries a vision of art's complicity with power to its endgame. If Art Basel is now globalized, then so is Minneapolis. Looping civilization back to end where it began, in Athens, he proposes that the only counterforce to fascism is love."
--Tom McCarthy, author of The Making of Incarnation

"Startlingly imaginative, The Floating World is at times like the work of a J. G. Ballard for the 2020s, at others like the reincarnation of Italo Calvino. Eastham is as deft with a finely observed comic riff as he is with a heart-stoppingly lovely description of a city, a gesture, a connection. In his hands, what could have been a satire of art-world hubris becomes something so attuned to the world--its wonder and its clear and present danger . . . I don't want to sound mawkish, but ultimately it's a novel about our boundless potential to connect, and what we should ultimately value."
--Luke Kennard, author of Black Bag

About the Author

Ben Eastham is an art critic and editor based in London. He is editor-in-chief of art-agenda and founding editor of The White Review. His writing has been published in ArtReview, frieze, e-flux, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times, among other publications. His book, The Imaginary Museum, was published by TLS Books in August 2020 and a book on contemporary art called The Shape of Things to Come is forthcoming from Fitzcarraldo Editions. The Floating World is his first novel.