About this item
A fiendishly clever dystopian novel for the digital age, The Word Exchange is a fresh, stylized, and decidedly original debut about the dangers of technology and the power of the printed word.In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted death of print has become a near reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers, and magazines are essentially things of the past, as we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but have become so intuitive as to hail us cabs before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of our stomachs, change traffic lights and interface with home appliances--even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange.Anana Johnson works with her father, Doug, at the North American Dictionary of the English Language NADEL, where they are hard at work on the final edition that will ever be printed.
About the Author
Alena Graedon's first novel, The Word Exchange, was a New York Times Editors' Choice and Paperback Row pick, and selected as a best novel of 2014 by Kirkus and Electric Literature. It has been translated into eight languages. She has twice been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and has also received fellowships at Yaddo, Ucross, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times Book Review, newyorker.com, The Believer magazine, and Guernica, among other publications. A native of Durham, North Carolina, Graedon is a graduate of Brown and Columbia University's MFA program. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
