Ryan Chapman is a Sri Lankan–American writer originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and currently based in Kingston, New York. He is the author of The Audacity and Riots I Have Known, which NPR named “one of the smartest—and best—novels of the year,” among other accolades. His criticism and humor pieces have appeared in Bookforum, The New Yorker, The Guardian, McSweeney’s, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, and elsewhere.
Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan
SESSION INFO:
Saturday, October 5, 2:00pm at Saratoga Arts: Satire for Dark Times: Ryan Chapman & John McPherson
Sunday, October 6, 4:00pm at Saratoga Spring Public Library, Dutcher Community Room: Memoir: Becoming an Artist with Hyeseung Song and Novelist Ryan Chapman
Books
About The Audacity
Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024
A Town & Country Must-Read Book for Spring
The Millions’ Most Anticipated Books of Spring
“Delicious satire.”
—Vanity Fair
A bracing satire about the implosion of a Theranos-like company, a collapsing marriage, and a billionaires’ “philanthropy summit,” for fans of Hari Kunzru and The White Lotus.
In 72 hours, a blockbuster exposé will reveal Victoria Stevens’ multibillion-dollar startup as a massive fraud. And Victoria has gone missing. Has she faked her death, leaving her husband Guy Sarvananthan to face the fallout—and potential jail time? Should Guy flee to his native Sri Lanka, an outcast and a failure? Or embrace denial? Why not: He takes the corporate jet to a private Caribbean island, where the 0.0001% have gathered to decide which one of the world’s biggest problems to “eradicate forever.” Guy drinks and drugs his way into oblivion, through manicured jungles and aboard superyachts, amid captains of industry, legions of staff, and unlikely saboteurs. Meanwhile, Victoria narrates her side of the story from an off-the-grid location in the California desert. In scribbled diary entries shot through with cultish self-help mantras, she plots her comeback, confident she’ll prove everyone wrong. Again.
Ryan Chapman’s incisive novel is a swan dive into the abyss and “Martin Amis’s Money for really late, late capitalism” (Amitava Kumar, author of A Time Outside This Time).
“Hilarious . . . Chapman’s sharp humor earns him that place among the master satirists.”
—Lit Hub
“Chapman proves his staying power as a shrewd and suspenseful satirist in his second novel . . . Chapman conveys malignant excess, arrogance, and greed in scenes of dizzying apocalyptic detail and acid humor.”
—Booklist
“[Chapman] has a keen eye for the foibles of the new gilded age.”
—Kirkus Reviews