UnWorld: A Novel - Softcover

Greene, Jayson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593688333 ISBN 13: 9780593688335

Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

From the author of Once More We Saw Stars comes a gripping novel about four intertwined lives that collide in the wake of a mysterious tragedy. Set in a near-future world where the boundaries between human and AI blur, the story challenges our understanding of consciousness and humanity.

"Gripping, tender, haunting, and so gorgeously written, UnWorld is a staggeringly beautiful debut novel.” —Suleika Jaouad, author of Between Two Kingdoms

Anna is shattered by the violent death of her son, Alex, and tormented by the question of whether it was an accident or a suicide. Samantha is Alex’s best friend, and the only eyewitness to his death. She keeps returning to the cliff where she watched him either jump or fall, trying to sift through the shards. Aviva is an “upload,” a digital entity composed of the sense memories of a human tether. But she’s “emancipated,” having left her human behind. Set free from her source and harboring a troubling secret, she finds temporary solace in the body of Cathy, a self-destructive ex-addict turned AI professor and upload-rights activist.

With UnWorld, Jayson Greene envisions a grim but eerily familiar near-future where all lines have blurred—between visceral and digital, human and machine, real and unreal. As Anna, Cathy, Sam, and Aviva’s stories hurtle toward one another, the stakes of UnWorld reveal themselves with electrifying intensity: What happens to the soul when it is splintered by grief? Where does love reside except in memory? What does it mean to be conscious, to be human, to be alive?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JAYSON GREENE is the author of Once More We Saw Stars and a contributing writer and former senior editor at Pitchfork. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son. This is his first novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Anna

More out of old habit than anything else, I watched Rick in the kitchen this morning, debating the precise moment to remind him. Too early and he’d wind up back in bed; too late and he’d still be a mess when I left the house. Some calculations you couldn’t keep yourself from doing.

When I finally dropped the bomb—­Don’t forget dinner tonight at Jen and Amir’s—­he was halfway through his coffee, pacing back and forth behind the kitchen island. “Oh, god,” he groaned, sinking onto a barstool, rubbing his face like he was trying to scrub away that reaction.

I waited.

“Oof, okay,” he said finally, through his hands. “I just need to prepare myself.” He looked up, his face childlike with worry. “You don’t think Samantha will be there, do you?”

I resisted the reflex to reassure him, fearing some sarcasm would creep through, and told him, truthfully, that I didn’t know. Then, to change the subject, I asked him how he was going to spend his day today. Four months into Rick’s “indefinite hiatus,” and both of us were running out of ideas.

I watched as he crossed his legs, one pale hairy flank appearing and disappearing from beneath his green robe. “First, I’m gonna answer some of those old sympathy notes, the ones we never got around to—­”

“No one cares if you respond to those, Rick,” I said gently.

He waved me off, sipping his coffee. “I know. Then I think I’ll go running early, before it gets too hot. I did it yesterday. It felt really good, so I’m going to keep doing it. After that, I’ll probably come back here and shower, then read for a few hours.” He beheld me with distant amusement. “I guess that’s it.”

“Sounds good!” I said, trying to make my voice sound encouraging. “Maybe try and figure out a way to leave the house one more time before dinner. Oh, your book’s upstairs on the dresser if you want it, by the way, and I saw your wallet. It’s in the laundry room.”

“Ah, thanks. The breadcrumb trail.”

Rick got up and began making his haphazard rounds. I stayed in my chair. You had to be careful around him—­his movements were so erratic and expansive that at any moment he was likely to wheel around and crash into you. I knew he was going to want his red shirt, which was in the dryer. I got up, fished it out, and waggled it at him. He did a little two-finger salute, pulled his old one off, and tossed it to me.

I put the dirty one to my face—­another reflex—­and was immediately rewarded with the impression of his chest hairs tickling my nose, the fruity musk of his armpit. It was such a potent memory that I teared up and threw the shirt roughly into the washing machine. Today was going to be long. I didn’t have the luxury of getting emotional over laundry..

I watched as Rick sat on our entryway bench and worked one heel into a distressed sneaker with the thumb of the opposite hand, pausing in this ritual somehow to sip precariously from his coffee mug, which he then left behind on the bench en route to the door.

He paused, his hand on the knob. “Some days,” he said, “I just want to die. Today is one of those days. I just want to die today. You know? Not coincidentally, I had three beers last night. I shouldn’t tonight. Anyway, it’s always good to see you in the morning.”

“I love you. See you for dinner.”

As soon as he was safely out the door, I got up to get dressed for my meeting. He hadn’t asked what I was doing today, which meant I hadn’t had to lie.

Small blessings.

Jen was the one who referred me to the lawyer. She’d taken pains to clarify, in an offhand way, that of course she’d never needed his services, but unspecified friends of hers in what she delicately referred to as my “situation” had apparently liked him very much. His demeanor was comforting. He didn’t lay on any guilt trips. And of course, most important—­a meaningful look here from Jen I tried to ignore—­he had a reputation for getting his clients everything they wanted.

Despite all the sickening cloak-­and-­dagger involved in scheduling the meeting, I’d somehow forgotten it was this morning. When I remembered—­around 4:00 a.m.—­I’d almost bolted out of bed. Now I sat alone in the kitchen, calculating the route on my phone. The app said the drive would take about half an hour. I decided to give myself an hour. Ever since I disabled the car’s AI, I’ve had to build extra time into every journey, to allow for getting lost and to give myself a few minutes to calm back down.

The streets around our house were quiet enough, mostly empty, so I felt pretty good starting out. I have to say, it really is like riding a bike—­even after a decade-­long break, the old instincts remain. I know I’ll never be as good as the self-­driving cars, which never drift or forget to signal. But I take some pride in muscle memory returning—­stopping, leaning forward to check the intersection, turning hand over hand. It feels good, like Rick said, so I’ve kept doing it. I could just imagine his face if he knew, though: eyes bugged, arms waving, voice rising—­something about a death wish, maybe.

I merged onto the highway and felt death encroaching. Cars shrieked past on both sides, the exit ramps peeling away and closing back in. Forty harrowing minutes later, I took my exit, parking hundreds of feet away from the other four cars. I fed myself a few dry almonds from the bag in the driver’s-­side door with shaky hands. I stared at the slice of my eyes in the rearview mirror for about five minutes until I was reasonably certain that no stranger could read distress into them.

Then I got out of the car.

The lawyer’s building wasn’t nice—­whitewashed cinder block, swinging bulbs, stale air. There was something perfect about it, I decided. Where better, really, to find yourself sneaking around like this?

When I opened the office door, a youngish guy surprised me, striding from his desk with one hand extended, brushing his pants with the other. He apologized for the building—­ “ ‘Rathole’ wouldn’t be inaccurate,” he said, laughing—­and chattered on about new leases and upcoming renovations. I clocked his purple dress shirt, so creased and shiny he might’ve ripped the packaging open on it this morning. His haircut looked almost as new—­Mormon? I found myself picturing his mother: Firm but kind. Crow’s-­feet from a lifetime’s worth of indulgent smiles. She would’ve emphasized the importance of showing courtesy to middle-­aged women.

Just as Jen promised, the lawyer was unfailingly, relentlessly pleasant. I wished he was meaner. Maybe, after all of my skulking around, I’d wanted a movie lawyer—­sleazy, humiliating—­to match my shame. This guy didn’t even lose his warmth when confirming basic facts: “I’ve always wanted to live there myself, but my wife’s work keeps us closer downtown,” he remarked when I mentioned our neighborhood. I wondered what his wife did. The phrase “downtown” sounded exotic, like a relic from some earlier era.

He assured me that the first steps were always the most overwhelming. First of all, he had to know if I was “really committed” or not. “It’s hard to get that ball rolling backward,”...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593688333
• ISBN 13: 9780593688335
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 225
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: EDITIONS GALLIMARD; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8.; Assago Milano; 20090; Italien