The Circus A Novel
The Circus by Jonas Karlsson is a novel published by Hogarth in 2020, featuring 178 pages in English. This work presents a Kafkaesque narrative centered on a gentle, off-beat narrator who leads a quiet life as a bakery worker and a meticulous record collector. His routine is disrupted when his childhood friend Magnus unexpectedly reenters his life, leading to a series of unsettling events, including Magnus’s mysterious disappearance during a magician’s act at the circus.
Readers will find a story that explores themes of friendship, identity, and the nature of reality through a psychological lens. The narrative unfolds with a blend of satire and literary elements, inviting reflection on the complexities of human relationships and the stories we construct. As the protagonist grapples with the enigma of Magnus’s vanishing and the eerie phone calls he receives, the novel delves into the intricacies of perception and the unsettling aspects of everyday life.
Official synopsis Publisher
A real-life vanishing act leaves one man looking for his missing friend in this Kafkaesque new novel from the author of The Room and The Invoice.
NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2020 BY The New York Times – BookRiot – The A.V. Club – Gizmodo
The gentle, off-beat narrator of The Circus is perfectly content with his quiet life. By day he works in a bakery, and by night he obsessively organizes and reorganizes his record collection: it’s all just the way he likes it. But when his childhood friend Magnus comes calling out of the blue, the contours of our narrator’s familiar world begin to shift. On a visit to the circus together, Magnus volunteers to participate in the magician’s disappearing act, and midway through the routine he vanishes. Is this part of the act? What’s happened to Magnus? And who is it calling on the phone in the dead of night, breathing into the receiver, but never saying a word?
Smart, sharply unsettling, and with its sleight of hand exquisitely kept, The Circus is a funhouse mirror of a read–one that ingeniously reveals the way we see ourselves and the stories we tell.
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