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The Odyssey

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

From the prize-winning author of Supper Club comes a wickedly funny and slyly poignant new satire on modern life - for fans of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Convenience Store Woman, and J. G. Ballard's High Rise

Meet Ingrid. She works on a gargantuan luxury cruise liner, where she spends her days reorganizing the merchandise and waiting for long-term guests to drop dead in the changing rooms. On her days off, she disembarks from the ship and gets blind drunk on whatever the local alcohol is. It's not a bad life. And it distracts her from thinking about the other life she left behind five years ago.

Until one day she is selected for the employee mentorship scheme - an initiative run by the ship's mysterious captain and self-anointed lifestyle guru, Keith, who pushes Ingrid further than she thought possible. But sooner or later, she will have to ask herself: how far is too far?

Utterly original, mischievous and thought-provoking, The Odyssey is a merciless takedown of consumer capitalism and our anxious, ill-fated quests for something to believe in. And as its title suggests, it is a voyage that will eventually lead its unlikely heroine all the way home. Though she'd do almost anything to avoid getting there...

© Lara Williams 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

This book is a serious vibe and wickedly funny. It's a slyly poignant satire on cruise ships, crappy jobs and capitalism from the author of the also-incredible Supper Club
Cosmopolitan, Best Books to Read in April
Far from normal... Williams has a deft touch in developing, by the accretion of small details, a sense of the strangeness of her characters and their situation - the feeling that the world is spinning imperceptibly off its axis
The Times
This is darkly comic existential fiction at its best, for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh, Sam Byers and Sayaka Murata... A subversive satire on consumer capitalism and the millennial search for meaning
Culture Whisper
Williams succeeds in satirising the seemingly unmockable: the overwhelming absurdities of modern life... There's more than a hint of a fever dream about the whole affair... Comparisons with Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation are unavoidable
Literary Review
Lara Williams is the queen of smart modern satire. Sharp and evocative, funny and dark, The Odyssey captures the joy and the weirdness of work, travel, ambition, and being a human woman who wants things. I could read her all day
Emma Jane Unsworth, author of 'Adults'
Slyly humorous, sharp, courageous and at times devastating... The Odyssey is a wildly original satire about the struggle to forge human connection and the craving for some semblance of order when one's life has fallen apart. Startlingly unique and beautifully written
Frances Cha, author of 'If I Had Your Face'
Astonishing, subversive and darkly funny - The Odyssey is another dazzler of a novel from the bold and highly perceptive Lara Williams
Zeba Talkhani, author of 'My Past is a Foreign Country'
Perceptive, enigmatic and thought-provoking - I couldn't put it down. Wonderful!
Amelia Horgan, author of 'Lost in Work'
Mischievous and thought-provoking
Sheerluxe, Best Books to Read in April
I have never read anything like this... Deliciously unpredictable, a testament to Lara Williams' fearlessness in diving into the absurd, cringeworthy, and downright uncomfortable aspects of life
Mateo Askaripour, author of 'Black Buck'
Author Lara Williams
Narrator Charly Clive
Duration 5 hours and 34 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9780241996775
Format Audiobook
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Genre Contemporary lifestyle fiction, Humorous fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Social issues
Availability AU, GB, IE

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