Participation

When the weather revolts, certainties dissolve and binaries blur as members of two reading groups converge at the intersection of theory and practice to reshape their lives, relationships, and reality itself.

In the latest novel from Anna Moschovakis, two reading groups, unofficially called Love and Anti-Love, falter amidst political friction and signs of environmental collapse. Participation offers a prescient look at communication in a time of rupture: anonymous participants exchange fantasies and ruminations, and relationships develop and unravel. As the groups consider – or neglect – their syllabi, and connections between members deepen, a mentor disappears, a translator questions his role, a colleague known as ‘the capitalist’ becomes a point of fixation, and ‘the news reports’ filter through in fragments. With incisive prose and surprising structural shifts, Participation forms an alluring vision of community, and a love story like no other.

The Millions ‘Most Anticipated’

‘A brilliant and prescient story of an intellectual woman’s engagement with two book clubs amid climate catastrophe and political strife…Moschovakis brings her fierce intelligence to bear in the structurally surprising and impeccably executed narrative. This is formal innovation at its finest.’ – Publishers Weekly, starred review

‘Moschovakis’ take on what it means to form community in opposition to the expectations of hierarchy, anticipated outcome, or even narrative…feels timely, perhaps even prescient, in an era when the only thing that seems constant is the incontrovertible need for change. Densely intellectual, the novel forces an alert reader to reconsider what it means to participate in the very act of reading.’- Kirkus

‘A stunning, lyrical novel [that] invokes poetic forms and devices to propel the reader through its brief, titled sections that dazzle and spark deep contemplation.’- Gage Saylor,Gasher

‘Anna Moschovakis’s narrator has been busy: boning up on the discourse of Love and Anti-Love; performing affective labor in the food service, mediation, and information industries; tugging gently at the nipple rings of a handsome capitalist; eating shrooms; exchanging cagey messages with a comrade whose gender remains tantalizingly suspended. Pronouns slip, and so do you, seduced in your turn by her direct address. Participation is a mysterious and sexy dive into the place where lust, altruism, and friendship converge.’ – Barbara Browning

Author Biography

Anna Moschovakis is the author of the novel Eleanor, or, The Rejection of the Progress of Loveand of three books of poetry, most recently They and We Will Get Into Trouble for This. Her translation of David Diop’sAt Night All Blood Is Black(Frere d’me) was awarded the 2020 International Booker Prize. Raised in Los Angeles, she has lived in New York since 1993 and currently makes her home in the Western Catskills.