The Audacity

Praise for The Audacity

“Fearless, irreverent, and so very funny, The Audacity skewers the ego-driven disruption culture of the uber rich. Chapman is a master of satire, and his hilarious runs are threaded through with moving looks at American identity, grief, self-loathing and self-worth. This is a dark, timely, super smart book.”

—Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light

“There are funny books, and then there is the occasional novel that actually makes you cackle—which I did, repeatedly, as I read Ryan Chapman’s The Audacity. It’s a satire that hits on the line level, sparing none of its characters or observation from its skewering wit. Timely in its reference points, but timeless in what it says about the relationship between America, inequality, and cultural assimilation, this book is A Modest Proposal by way of Succession.”

—Kevin Nguyen, author of New Waves

“Equal parts Sam Lipsyte and Don DeLillo, The Audacity is razor-sharp satire about the lowlifes of high tech and the absurdity of our present reality. Chapman’s prose overflows with verve, wit, and intelligence, but he never forgets the tender, beating heart at the core. I tore through the book with laughter and envy.”

—Lincoln Michel, author of The Body Scout

“Almost exactly a hundred years later, this is The Great Gatsby, updated. This is the art of the affluent we want. The excesses of the lives of the idealistic or deluded or avaricious super-rich might all be false but what is certainly real is the energy on each page of this novel. The only way to blurb this book is simply quote from it. Martin Amis’s Money for really late, late capitalism.”

—Amitava Kumar, author of A Time Outside This Time

“Ryan Chapman cavorts amidst the twisted wreckage of our zeitgeist like it’s his own rollicking funhouse. The Audacity is a tragicomic thrill ride that tips a trick-filled hat to postmodernists past as it delivers its devastating cultural critique. The smartest, most enjoyable novel I’ve read all year.”

—David Goodwillie, author of Kings County

“With The Audacity, Ryan Chapman has perfected the art of satire in a decidedly post-satire era. It is delicate work to mine humor from the daily bathos of Silicon Valley superachievers and their gnomic lusts, but with a surfeit of literary tools at his disposal, Chapman has done it. Employing the sector-specific fluencies of David Foster Wallace, the deadpan whimsy of Douglas Coupland, the intoxicated bite of early Martin Amis, and the postmodern empathy of Jennifer Egan, Chapman has conjured a tragicomic tech dystopia from an Onion headline, a hyper-capitalist wasteland populated by fleece-vested minor gods who haven’t quite realized they’ve already fallen from grace.”

—Jonny Diamond, editor of Literary Hub