The Repeat Room

Download or read book The Repeat Room written by Jesse Ball and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2024-09-24 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos in this provocative new novel from one of America’s most brilliant and distinctive writers In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes. The case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel’s shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy's broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception. Artful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball's absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.