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NEW WAVES

Kevin Nguyen

Edgy debut novel, set in the New York City tech world, about a heist gone wrong, a secret online life exposed, and a young man's search for true connection.
NEW WAVES is filled with sharp observations about human nature and a dry, biting humor. Kevin Nguyen brings a fresh voice along with his insider intel of today's tech industry to this story where our young antagonist is faced with the shocking death of his friend and colleague just after they'd decided to steal their start-up company's user database. After she's gone, he discovers she's had a deep and secret life online and he can't help himself but to dive in after her and not only does he find how little he knew about his best friend, but this event also changes his life forever.

NEW WAVES is a pitch-perfect exploration of race and start-up culture, secrecy and surveillance, social media and friendship. It is also incredibly funny and edgy and so timely as Nguyen's characters embody controversial debates on race, gender, and belonging, but he writes with bemused affection for his young characters and always employs a humorous touch that emphasizes the absurdity of it all.

Kevin Nguyen is the features editor at The Verge and was formerly a senior editor at GQ. He's written for The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The Millions. He's a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the National Book Foundation Junior Committee, and has served as a judge for the PEN Open Book Award. Nguyen has been named one of 100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture by Brooklyn Magazine and a Star Watch Honoree by Publishers Weekly.

He has earned his literary following, and became a Publishers Weekly Rising Star Honoree, from his work for the National Book Foundation, National Book Critics Circle, and PEN America. Nguyen has over 26,000 Twitter followers and his tweeted deal announcement with Chris Jackson's imprint, One World, garnered praise from many authors including Emma Straub, Robin Sloan, Alexander Chee, Jenny Han, Alexandra Alter, and Tommy Orange even responded by offering to blurb the book. Several influencers follow Nguyen on Twitter, including authors (Colson Whitehead, J. Courtney Sullivan, Celeste Ng, Jami Attenberg, Edan Lepucki, Michiko Kakutani, Victor LaValle, John Green, Jennifer Weiner, Rainbow Rowell, Anand Giridharadas, Mira Jacob, Jenna Wortham), actors (John Cho, Chrissy Teigen, Hasan Minhaj), and journalists (nearly half of Nguyen's followers are reporters, including for the New York Times Book Review, NPR, The New Yorker, New York magazine, GQ, This American Life, Teen Vogue, Buzzfeed, and The Millions.) He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Social: Twitter: @knguyen
Available products
Book

Published 2020-03-10 by One World

Book

Published 2020-03-10 by One World

Comments

In NEW WAVES, a grieving young man dives into the dizzying kaleidoscope of 21st-century online culture, trying to understand his lost friend - and the difference (or is there one?) between our "real" lives and our virtual ones. Kevin Nguyen's debut is a knowing, witty, and thought-provoking exploration of love, modern isolation, and what it means to exist - especially as a person of color - in our increasingly digital age.

E.M. Forster's mandate was to 'only connect.' Kevin Nguyen shows us that in our brave new digital world, the best way to do that might be to disconnect. The result is New Waves, a sleek, stylish novel that weaves between disaffection and desire.

Mordant and fiercely smart, Kevin Nguyen's New Waves is a mystery within a mystery within a love story and it left me haunted, breathless. An ambitious, unsparing, exhilarating debut.

A brilliant meditation on death and grief in the age of the internet.New Waves is full of modern noise and complicated love. Itsprismatic, futuristic take on race and identity are a thrill to read. The book is funny and sad in equal measure, inventive, self-aware, full of insight, but also entirely enjoyable.

Kevin Nguyen's New Waves collapses every tired distinction about the internet. In this novel of relationships, race, and loss, everything isboth permanent and ephemeral - technology both preserves and buries culture, and the people who ghost you can also haunt you. With his swift, funny, and merciless prose,Nguyen smartly dissects how life online may be digital, but it's far from binary.

New Waves is not one novel, but several: an acerbic portrait of startup culture, a circa-now account of twentysomething life in New York City, a moving exploration of grief, and a clear-eyed appraisal of race, sex, and privilege. Nguyen deserves our loudest applause.

NEW WAVES is a virtuosic debut novel delving into the wild vicissitudes of living with, and on, the interned. I'll read anything by Kevin Nguyen.

New Waves.cleverly conjures a modern Gatsby-and-Nick-Carraway dynamic between the narrator, Lucas, and his co-worker Margo... [Nguyen] captures beautifully the subtle strains of being disenfranchised, poor and lonely in New York.

A blistering sendup of startup culture and a sprawling, ambitious, tender debut.

Nguyen's stellar debut is a piercing assessment of young adulthood, the tech industry, and racism... Nguyen impressively holds together his overlapping plot threads whileproviding incisive criticism of privilege and adose of sharp humor. The story is fast-paced and fascinating, but also deeply felt; the effect is a page-turner with some serious bite. Read more...

New Waves is a delight and a gamble and a treasure and a miracle. Nguyen's novel broke my heart. It made me laugh harder than any book reasonably should. It's everything I could possibly want in a story -- but it's also that rarest, most unachievable of things: New Waves is truly something new.