Dear Dickhead

Library Science September book club pick | A Vulture most anticipated book of the fall
One of The New York Times' 24 works of fiction to read this fall | A Guardian best translated fiction pick | A Town & Country must-read fall book

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The French novel taking the world by storm: an ultracontemporary Dangerous Liaisons about sex, feminism, & addiction.

Dear Dickhead,
I read your post on Insta. You're like a pigeon shitting on my shoulder as you flap past. It's shitty & unpleasant. Waah, waah, waah, I'm a pissy little pantywaist, no one loves me so I whimper like a Chihuahua in the hope someone will notice me.. Congratulations: you’ve got your fifteen minutes of fame! You want proof? I’m writing to you.

Oscar is a B-list novelist in his forties. He used to be an alcoholic & a cokehead, but now he keeps himself busy by ranting on social media. When Rebecca, an actress whose looks he insulted, sends him an angry email, they strike up a combative correspondence—at the very moment that Oscar is accused of sexual harassment by his former publicist. What ensues is a no-holds-barred conversation about life under the patriarchy, & above all about addiction—to drugs, to alcohol, to the internet, to rage.

Virginie Despentes, the celebrated author of King Kong Theory, has written her breakthrough book: a Dangerous Liaisons for our time. We follow Rebecca & Oscar as they develop an unlikely friendship & argue over questions of right & wrong in a city—Paris—where pleasure, excess, & freedom rule the day, or used to. Dear Dickhead is a guns-blazing novel about a culture that makes men & women sick, & about how the search for feeling leaves us addicted to what makes us feel. The result is a provocative & unmissable book from the author hailed by The Guardian as France’s “rock & roll Zola.”

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Virginie Despentes is a French writer & filmmaker who has written 16 books.