anna moschovakis ><><

Released in the US and Canada in November 2022, Participation is a precarious novel about love & comradeship, the discomforts of desire, forms and functions of labor, and the embodied experience of reading and being read.

---

Shelf Unbound (April/May 2023)
The Millions – A Year in Reading
Lambda Literary – Most Anticipated LGBTQIA + Books
Lit Hub – Best Covers of November (for U.S. edition)
Lit Hub – 15 Books to Dive Into
The Millions – Most Anticipated

“The novel’s true subject is not really work or capitalism or desire. Rather, it probes what it is to think about work and capitalism and desire—and love, and anger, and freedom, and care.” —Jess Bergman, Bookforum

“Desire, conviction, commitment, connection — or simply need — can be a bridge politically, semantically, narratively and interpersonally … This is Moschovakis’ magic trick: by withholding cohesion, the reader must work to meet her in the middle (must, in other words, participate.) This is, of course, how poetry is made — and maybe, eventually, revolution. Experimental, brilliant, and deeply moving, Participation offers an anti-guide for the current moment: not teaching us how to live, but inviting us to try.” —Sadie Graham, The Toronto Star

“A compelling, charming, and surprisingly sexy exploration of vital questions of selfhood and community” — The Capilano Review

“Digging into themes of community, connection, love and sex, and much more, this is urgent, darkly witty, and essential storytelling from a singular writer.” — Open Book

“Desire expressed without gendered language ripples in interesting ways, energizing the description of a prelude to a kiss and dispatches from a live blog in the wake of a disaster. As the book accelerates towards its finish, there is increasing entropy and beautiful irresolution. … [Its] arch sexiness has the appeal of Marguerite Duras in The Lover or The Ravishing of Lol Stein.” — Rain Taxi

“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

Advance Praise

“Anna Moschovakis’s new novel Participation is a story of seeking an internal world that is very much grounded in the real world. It’s a story of Love and Anti-love, of coherence and cohesion, of fate and free will, of pain and pleasure, of loss and love. Moschovakis takes us on an exploration of ‘soft psychology’ alongside ‘hard politics,’ ‘soft feeling’ alongside ‘hard ideology,’ and invites us to orient and reorient ourselves toward our ‘comings-apart’ and ‘comings-together.’ I hope you accept her invitation.” —Poupeh Missaghi

“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

“Participation is radically imagined and radically felt: a self-reflexive, intellectual, formally inventive novel that is also highly engaging and very funny. Anna Moschovakis is a brilliant and singular writer with a terrific feel for this cultural moment.” —Dana Spiotta