The Vegan

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What to expect

'A meaty comedy with a bleeding heart, highly recommended for all animals who read'
Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Netanyahus

Herschel Caine is a soon-to-be master of the universe. His hedge fund, built on the miracle of machine learning, is inches away from systematically extracting obscene profits from the market.

But on the night of 12 May, at his elegant Brooklyn townhouse, he has something else on his mind - the dinner party he and his wife have devised to woo their new A-list neighbours. When the evening fizzles, Herschel indulges in a devilish prank that goes horrifically awry, plunging him into a tailspin of guilt and regret. As his tightly constructed world starts to unravel, he clings to the moral clarity he finds in the last place he'd expect: a sudden connection with a neighbourhood dog.

In The Vegan, Andrew Lipstein challenges our notions of virtue with a brilliant tale of guilt, greed, and how far we'll go to be good.

Critics Review

Andrew Lipstein's The Vegan is a meaty comedy with a bleeding heart, highly recommended for all animals who read
Joshua Cohen, winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Vegan is the weirdest novel I've read in ages. In a good way. A genre unto itself. Skillfully written and strangely addictive
Lionel Shriver
Skewers capitalism, consumerism, and milquetoast morality in its pointed teeth
Elle
Exquisite . . . perfectly pitched between farce and poignancy
i
One of my favourite books . . . poignant, but also really funny and lightly written . . . grapples with ethical questions in a really sensitive way
Financial Times
I ignored house and home to read this propulsive story of impulse, guilt, and resolve. A dazzling and resonant allegory for our moral moment
Julia May Jonas, author of VLADIMIR
A pig in a blanket of irony, subversion and humour
New York Times
Propulsive
Los Angeles Times
You will want to tear through this ingenious tale in one sitting, but I urge you to resist and wallow in the strange, hilarious, whip-smart world Andrew Lipstein has built. Exacting, upending and constantly surprising, I loved this novel
Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
At once bracingly contemporary and deeply strange . . . The Vegan channels the queasy paranoia of an era when the fear of human extinction via machine learning can make even masters of the universe feel like trapped animals
Time
In his engrossing new novel, Andrew Lipstein has produced a feverish, fantastically surprising parable about guilt, money, and (curveball) the lives of animals. It reads like the unholy offspring of Saul Bellow's Seize the Day and Julio Cortázar's cosmic short fiction, or Crime and Punishment for the Brooklyn brownstone set
Andrew Martin, author of EARLY WORK AND COOL FOR AMERICA
A propulsive, wild ride
Vanity Fair
A fresh, witty, masterfully crafted morality tale for the modern age. Lipstein has conceived an unforgettable character, terrifyingly real, who could have walked out of an episode of Succession. I absolutely (bordering on obsessively) loved this novel
Virginia Feito, author of MISS MARCH
Andrew Lipstein's hilarious, acid-tart, spot-on, and deeply unnerving novel The Vegan follows its privileged narrator as his inability to tolerate his own guilt and complicity deranges him. We can't turn away as he follows his impulse, both righteous and ridiculous, to burn it all down. Lipstein has written a precise, weird, and wildly propulsive take on modern American ethical and moral bankruptcy
Dana Spiotta, author of WAYWARD
A sharply observed literary novel with elements of satire and intrigue baked into the mix, The Vegan is a deftly told morality tale for our time
Jonathan Tropper
A funny, intelligent page-turner, The Vegan explores what it means to have self-determination and to take it from another - or to have it taken from you. It unfolds in a delectably paranoid fever dream that possesses a Kafkaesque strangeness, humor, and moral terror. One of the most entertaining and beguiling novels I've read in years. Lipstein has quickly joined the ranks of my favorite contemporary novelists
Cara Blue Adams, author of YOU NEVER GET IT BACK
A topsy-turvy investigation of that most disorienting question: What does it mean to be a good person?
Kirkus Reviews
The Vegan is unexpectedly hilarious in the face of doom. Andrew Lipstein has managed to create gruesomely cinematic scenes within a contemporary landscape of greed, and it's amazing to watch
Chelsea Hodson, author of TONIGHT I'M SOMEONE ELSE
With mind-bending skillfulness, The Vegan plumbs the back alleys of morality without ever moralizing. This is storytelling that feels sharply contemporary, dizzyingly intelligent, and utterly original.
Allegra Hyde, author of THE LAST CATASTROPHE

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