Keynote
“A fast, fizzing cherry bomb of a debut” (The Observer [UK]) about power, intimacy, and the internet
Book Title
I'm a Fan
Subtitle
A Novel
Cover Image
- Finalist for the 2023 Dylan Thomas Prize
Longlisted for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction
Body
I stalk a woman on the internet who is sleeping with the same man as I am.
Sheena Patel’s incandescent first novel begins with the unnamed narrator describing her involvement in a seemingly unequal romantic relationship. With a clear and unforgiving eye, she dissects the behavior of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world. I’m a Fan offers a devastating critique of class, social media, patriarchy’s hold on us, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed.
In this unforgettable debut, Patel announces herself as a dynamic, commanding new voice in literature, capable of rendering a rollercoaster of emotions and experiences viscerally on the page. Sex, brutality, politics, work, art, tenderness, humor—Patel tackles them all while making the reader complicit in the inescapable trap of fandom that seems to define the modern condition.
Sheena Patel’s incandescent first novel begins with the unnamed narrator describing her involvement in a seemingly unequal romantic relationship. With a clear and unforgiving eye, she dissects the behavior of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world. I’m a Fan offers a devastating critique of class, social media, patriarchy’s hold on us, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed.
In this unforgettable debut, Patel announces herself as a dynamic, commanding new voice in literature, capable of rendering a rollercoaster of emotions and experiences viscerally on the page. Sex, brutality, politics, work, art, tenderness, humor—Patel tackles them all while making the reader complicit in the inescapable trap of fandom that seems to define the modern condition.
List Price
$17.00
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About the Author
Credit: Salam Zaied
Praise
- “Sheena Patel’s I'm a Fan is an impolite novel about romantic obsession . . . allowing the narrator’s ferocious id to spin out thrillingly and unapologetically. . . . Patel’s clever novel suggests just how easily such ambitions can be lost in the power imbalance of heterosexual libidinal attachment.”—Tracy O'Neill, The New York Times Book Review
- “A queasy, ruthless novel of sexual obsession and self-destruction in the preening, perfectible age of social media. . . . I’m a Fan [is] an unsettling, unmissable read.”—Jamie Hood, Vulture
- “Sheena Patel eviscerates the rich kid art world, as exemplified by a particularly toxic ex. It’s written in a speedy, fragmented internal monologue, which makes for an absolutely propulsive read.”—Maggie Lange, Bustle
- “While I think many readers can relate to the unnamed protagonist—she’s vulnerable, grouchy, sweet, audacious, hungry, lonely—she also felt uniquely real to me, an actual person, and I loved her by the end. I read I’m a Fan in one and a half sittings.”—Ottessa Moshfegh, Bomb
