Rejection

‘A thrill for the sickos among us’ JIA TOLENTINO

‘Utterly inimitable’ RAVEN LEILANI

‘Unrelentingly brutal and gut-bustingly funny and spares no one’ CARMEN MARIA MACHADO

'Symbiotically serious and funny' MEGAN NOLAN

'The funniest, darkest thing' ST VINCENT

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION

An audacious, original and unforgettable novel-in-stories that follows a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection throws their lives and relationships into chaos.

Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the thorniest problems of modern life: sex, relationships, identity and the internet.

We see a young man’s passionate allyship turn to a furious and debilitating nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that his feminism isn’t getting him laid; a young woman’s unrequited crush spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of both her sense of self and her group chat; and witness a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship lead to a life-upending mistake. As these characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways that our delusions can warp our desire for connection.

Written with the accomplished authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a losers’ manifesto, Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte radically redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society and oneself.

‘A book of mad, madcap genius’ Garth Greenwell

‘He writes about these things in the way Anthony Bourdain wrote about restaurants… Tulathimutte is a big talent’ The New York Times Book Review

‘Blistering … takes a magnifying glass to the mind in the internet age’ Vogue

‘There’s a volatile thrill to the writing … snortingly funny’ Wall Street Journal

‘Obsessively readable, acerbic, Foster Wallace–inflected’ Vanity Fair

‘A master comedian with a virtuoso prose style … audacious, original and highly disturbing’ New York Times Magazine

A Book of the Year in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New Yorker, NPR, Time Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Kirkus Review and Electric Literature.

© 2025 Fourth Estate (Audiobook): 9780008759391

Release date

Audiobook: 13 February 2025