Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2018
400 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
An exhilarating, original novel, set in Brazil, Idaho, and outer space, about an obsessive librarian, a down-at-heel author, and a disgraced historian who go on the hunt for a mystical, life-changing book--and find it.
The Infinite Future is a mindbending novel that melds two page-turning tales in one. In the first, we meet three broken people, joined by an obsession with a forgotten Brazilian science-fiction author named Salgado-MacKenzie. There's Danny, a writer who's been scammed by a shady literary award committee; Sergio, journalist turned sub-librarian in São Paulo; and Harriet, an excommunicated Mormon historian in Salt Lake City, who years ago corresponded with the reclusive Brazilian writer. The motley trio sets off to discover his identity, and whether his fabled masterpiece--never published--actually exists. Did his inquiries into the true nature of the universe yield something so enormous that his mind was blown for good?
In the second half, Wirkus gives us the lost masterpiece itself--the actual text of The Infinite Future, Salgado-MacKenzie's wonderfully weird magnum opus. The two stories merge in surprising and profound ways. Part science-fiction, part academic satire, and part book-lover's quest, this wholly original novel captures the heady way that stories inform and mirror our lives.
"Stupendously inventive and rewarding…Especially well suited for fans of Jonathan Lethem and Ron Currie, this work announces Wirkus as one of the most exciting novelists of his generation." - Booklist
"Wirkus can be inventive or derivative, a skilled storyteller who introduces more elements than he can connect, posing more questions than any earthly being could answer." - Publishers Weekly
"An experimental, deeply meta novel about the search for meaning and the disappointments of reality." - Kirkus Reviews
"Roberto Bolaño meets Ursula K. Le Guin meets James Hynes meets, um, Kilgore Trout? I'm having a difficult time being clever in the shadow of having read Tim Wirkus's magnificently audacious The Infinite Future." – Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock
"Brilliant, playful, and profound, The Infinite Future offers its readers stories within stories within stories, all of them thrilling and wise. Tim Wirkus has written a strange and beautiful magic trick of a book, and I was enthralled. I loved it." – Edan Lepucki, author of California and Woman No. 17
"The Infinite Future is uniquely pleasurable. Again and again it changes the terms of its telling—wrapping stories within stories and narrators within narrators, enclosing the mystical in the earthly and the fantastic in the realistic." – Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
"Tim Wirkus has worked wonders. The Infinite Future is an astonishing feat, a religious text wrapped in a science-fiction yarn wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a road trip wrapped in a snarky collegiate literary feud. At every turn it surprises and delights, and in the end it proves itself a deeply moving examination of what it means to tell—and more importantly, be told—stories." – Forrest Leo, author of The Gentleman
"From the foreword on I was taken by this novel. Entertaining, fun and very, very smart, the story is everywhere at once, but never lost. This is a house of mirrors worth entering." - Percival Everett, author of Erasure and Half an Inch of Water
This information about The Infinite Future was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tim Wirkus is the author of one previous novel, City of Brick and Shadow (Tyrus Books, 2014), which was a finalist for the Shamus Award and the winner of the Association for Mormon Letters Best Novel Award. His short fiction has appeared in The Best American Non-Required Reading, Subtropics, Cream City Review, Weird Fiction Review, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. His novella, Sandy Downs, won the 2013 Quarterly West novella contest. He's currently a doctoral candidate in the University of Southern California's Creative Writing and Literature Program.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
