Participation

A Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2022

“A brilliant and prescient story. . . . 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

“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

“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