Leave Society

From the acclaimed author of Taipei, a bold portrait of a writer working to balance all his lives--artist, son, loner--as he spins the ordinary into something monumental. An engrossing, hopeful novel about life, fiction, and where the two blur together.

In 2014, a novelist named Li leaves Manhattan to visit his parents in Taipei for ten weeks. He doesn’t know it yet, but his life will begin to deepen and complexify on this trip. As he flies between these two worlds--year by year, over four years--he will flit in and out of optimism, despair, loneliness, sanity, bouts of chronic pain, and drafts of a new book. He will incite and temper arguments, uncover secrets about nature and history, and try to understand how to live a meaningful life as an artist and a son. But how to fit these pieces of his life together? Where to begin? Or should he leave society altogether?

Exploring everyday events and scenes--waiting rooms, dog walks, family meals--while investigatively venturing to the edges of society, where culture dissolves into mystery, Lin shows what it is to write a novel in real time. Illuminating and deeply felt, as it builds toward a stunning, if unexpected, romance, Leave Society is a masterly story about life and art at the end of history.

A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

TAO LIN is the author of the novels Trip, Taipei, Richard Yates, and Eeeee Eee Eeee, the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel, the story collection Bed, and the poetry collections Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and you are a little bit happier than i am. He was born in Virginia, has taught in Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA program, and is the founder and editor of Muumuu House.