Idiopathy - Paperback

by Sam Byers (Author)

A debut novel of love, narcissism, and ailing cattle

Idiopathy (?d?'?p i): a disease or condition which arises spontaneously or for which the cause is unknown.

Idiopathy is a novel that is as unexpected as its title, in which Katherine, Daniel, and Nathan--three characters you won't forget in a hurry--unsuccessfully try to figure out how they feel about one another and how they might best live their lives in a world gone mad. Featuring a mysterious cattle epidemic, a humiliating stint in rehab, an unwanted pregnancy, a mom-turned-media personality ("Mother Courage"), and a workplace with a bio-dome housing a perfectly engineered cornfield, it is at once a scathing satire and a moving meditation on love and loneliness. With unusual verbal finesse and great humor, Sam Byers neatly skewers the tangled relationships and unhinged narcissism of a self-obsessed generation in a remarkable, uproarious first novel.

Author Biography

Sam Byers is a graduate of the master's program in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. His fiction has been published in Granta and he regularly reviews books for The Times Literary Supplement. He was born in 1979.