The bold and boundlessly original debut novel from the Oscar®-winning screenwriter of Being
John Malkovich Adaptation Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche New York.
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • A dyspeptic satire that owes much to
Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon . . . propelled by Kaufman’s deep imagination considerable
writing ability and bull’s-eye wit.—The Washington Post An astonishing creation . . . riotously
funny . . . an exceptionally good [book].”—The New York Times Book Review • Kaufman is a master
of language . . . a sight to behold.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND
MEN’S HEALTH B. Rosenberger Rosenberg neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed
academic filmmaker paramour shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer) stumbles upon a
hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider—a film he’s convinced will change his career
trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest
movie ever made—a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur
ninety years to complete—B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity.
The only problem: The film is destroyed leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently
ephemeral genius. All that’s left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must
somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. Thus
begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche as lushly
Kafkaesque as it is atrophied by the relentless spew of Twitter. Desperate to impose order on
an increasingly nonsensical existence trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational
victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language B. scrambles to re-create the lost masterwork
while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of likes” and arbitrary
denunciations that are simultaneously his bête noire and his raison d’être. A searing
indictment of the modern world Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art time memory
identity comedy and the very nature of existence itself—the grain of truth at the heart of
every joke.
