Lance Olsen Bücher

Set in Berlin in 1927, this novel explores the convergence of renowned historical figures, including artists, actors, physicists, and autocrats, over the course of a single day. Through an impressionistic narrative, it delves into the vibrant cultural and political landscape of the time, capturing the essence of an era marked by creativity and upheaval. The intertwining lives of these iconic personalities reveal the complexities of their relationships and the impact of their legacies on the world.

Skin Elegies uses the metaphor of mind-upload technologies to explore questions about the relationship of the cellular brain to personhood, memory, and where the human might end and something else begin. In a dystiopian future, an American couple flee their increasingly authoritarian country by transferring to a quantum computer housed in North Africa. The novel’s structure mimics a constellation of firing neurons—a sparking collage of many tiny narraticules flickering through the brain of one of the refugees as it is digitized. Those narraticules comprise nine larger stories intersecting with memorable moments in human time: the Fukushima disaster; the day the Internet was turned on; the final hours of the Battle of Berlin; John Lennon’s murder; an assisted suicide in Switzerland; the Columbine massacre; a woman killed by a domestic abuser; a Syrian boy making his way to Berlin; and the Challenger disaster.With his characteristic brilliance and unrivaled uniqueness, Lance Olsen delivers an innovative, speculative, literary novel in the key of Margaret Atwood, Stanislaw Lem, and J.G. Ballard.

Girl Imagined by Chance is a critifictional novel about a couple who find themselves having created a make-believe daughter (and soon a make-believe life to accompany her) in order to appease their friends, family, and the culture of reproduction. Structured around twelve photographs from a single roll of film, the book explores the nature of photography and the questions that nature raises about the notions of the simulated and the real, the media-ization of consciousness, originality, self construction, and the way we all continually fashion our faces into masks for the next shot. At its heart, Girl Imagined by Chance investigates the mystery of self-knowledge. The prevailing metaphor and structural device of photography examines the way images, in their magical ability to mimic memory, ultimately mock and eradicate it. The seemingly stable and fixed individual past turns out to be as protean and unknowable as the future. The body becomes strangely dispensable, perpetually adrift in a cybernetic world of hyperlinks and interfaces.

Exploring the philosophy of contemporary writing and the corporatization of literature, this collection features essays and interviews by Lance Olsen, showcasing his innovative approach to narrative. He delves into topics such as entropology, identity politics, and media culture, while reflecting on influential writers like Borges and Kafka. With personal insights into his craft, the work highlights Olsen's dedication to preserving the art of literature in a rapidly changing world, emphasizing his role as a significant voice in twenty-first-century nonfiction.

The narrative explores the emotional complexities faced by the 1979 expeditioners as they depart from Macquarie Island. It delves into themes of nostalgia, camaraderie, and the challenges of leaving behind a unique experience. The characters grapple with their memories and the impact of their time on the island, reflecting on both the beauty and harshness of their surroundings. This poignant journey captures the essence of adventure and the bittersweet nature of farewells, making it a compelling read for those interested in exploration and human connection.

With Lance Olsen’s signature flair, Absolute Away is an innovative narrative triptych, a story of one life reimagined. The first movement tells the story of Edie Metzger, a little Jewish girl who bit Hermann Göring’s lip so hard it bled at a Nazi book-burning rally in 1933. In the second, in 1956, grown Edie is the passenger clinging to the backseat of the Oldsmobile 88 convertible driven by Jackson Pollock, moments before it plunges off the road. In the third, the narrative embarks into an ever-unspooling universe of Edies that might have lived—Edie’s gender, past, and consciousness flying forever farther apart.Absolute Away is a novel about travel in its largest sense—about the self, the past, the future, aging, ideas, relationships, our own mortal being(s) as transitive verbs, and how what and who we are connects to everything else.