We’re thrilled to share that our July Book Club selection is Matthew Salesses’s new novel Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, forthcoming from Little A on August 11, but available to Rumpus Book Club members in just a few weeks!
Matt Kim is always tired. He keeps passing out. His cat is dead. His wife and daughter have left him. He’s estranged from his adoptive family. People bump into him on the street as if he isn’t there. He is pretty sure he’s disappearing. His girlfriend, Yumi, is less convinced. But then she runs into someone who looks exactly like her, and her doppelgänger turns out to have dated someone who looks exactly like Matt. Except the other Matt was superior in every way. He was clever, successful, generous, and beloved—until one day he suddenly and completely vanished without warning. How can Matt Kim protect his existence when a better version of him wasn’t able to? Or is his worse life a reason for his survival?
Set in a troubling time in which a presidential candidate is endorsed by the KKK and white men in red hats stalk Harvard Square, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear is a haunting and frighteningly funny novel about Asian American stereotypes, the desires that make us human, puns, and what happens to the self when you have to become someone else to be seen.
“Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear is a Kafkaesque, Murakamiesque, dream-like novel of alienation and duplication, oftentimes quite funny, and all the times quite strange. A remarkable, entertaining, disturbing achievement. Look out for it.” – Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer
Subscribe to the Rumpus Book Club by June 15 to join us in reading Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, culminating in an exclusive online discussion with author Matthew Salesses about the book!
