Arcadia

"An incredibly thrilling and caustic novel of our times." --Grazia
"E.B-T's books are offered as treaties of insubordination. Dissident manifestos, often expressed by energetic narrators whom the novelist gladly defines as 'missionaries,' as 'right-doers,' rebels in abnormal bodies, determined to do better than surviving and to compete against this dysfunctional world of ours. ... She's mixing poetry and triviality in the most virtuoso and heartening way ever, in an ultra-contemporary and resolutely political novel." --Télérama
"Better than the literary genre, it is the trans-genre she invents, mixing social satire and erotic comedy. [...] From their position as outsiders, these queer teenagers observe and not less think, such as magnificent little world criticizing machines. Withdrawal, narcissism set up as virtue, rapacious heirs... everything's going through the author's mill." --Elle
"A manifesto for the abolition of sexual, geographical and even literary frontiers..." --L'Obs

“A fantastic journey to a world where sex and gender binary differences and the distinctions between the normal and the pathological dissolve and transmute not without risk. Using a language full of humor and subtlety, Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam manages to capture the contradictions and complexities of the period we live in at the end of a political regime where new configurations of subjectivity, belonging, love and kinship are still taking shape but are not yet fully recognized. Moving and illuminating.” —Paul B. Preciado, author of An Apartment on Uranus "French writer Bayamack-Tam’s rich English-language debut chronicles the coming-of-age adventures of a teenage girl who lives in a commune with her family. After moving from Paris, Farah adjusts to new life at Liberty House, a technology-free space where the harmonious 'love conquers all' credo is echoed among the followers and promoted by their spiritual guru, Arcady. Farah and her family are de-baptized and renamed upon entering the community, and remain carefully attuned to Arcady’s daily exegesis and impassioned sermons. Farah is a bulky, awkward adolescent who soon discovers she is intersex and grapples with conflicting male and female impulses. Meanwhile, she is coddled by an increasingly creepy Arcady, who passionately promises her unconditional acceptance and unbridled sex with him once she’s old enough. Eventually, Farah learns to embrace and treasure the 'androgynous creature”'her body has become, particularly after a migrant integrates himself into the community and promotes independence among Arcady’s followers. While the supporting characters are a bit too thinly drawn, Bayamack-Tam builds out the family’s swift acclimation to Liberty House with clever detail and flashes of humor, as when Farah’s nudist grandmother frolics on the commune’s grounds and her mother claims to suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity. It all adds up to an engrossing and provocative character study."  —Publishers Weekly "Subversive, funny, political, erudite, Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam confirms with Arcadie that she is one of the most astonishing female novelists of our time." —Les Inrockuptibles