One of Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Favorite Fiction Books of 2017, a Literary Hub Staff Favorite Book of 2017, and one of BOMB Magazine's "Looking Back on 2017: Literature" Selections.
"Wondrous . . . [A] sense of the erratic and tangential quality of everyday life―even if it’s displaced into a bizarre, parallel world―drifts off the page, into the world you see, after reading Dear Cyborgs." ―Hua Hsu, The New Yorker
In a small Midwestern town, two Asian American boys bond over their outcast status and a mutual love of comic books. Meanwhile, in an alternative or perhaps future universe, a team of superheroes ponder modern society during their time off. Between black-ops missions and rescuing hostages, they swap stories of artistic malaise and muse on the seemingly inescapable grip of market economics. 
Gleefully toying with the conventions of the novel, Dear Cyborgs weaves together the story of a friendship’s dissolution with a provocative and timely meditation on protest. Through a series of linked monologues, a lively cast of characters explores narratives of resistance―protest art, eco-terrorists, Occupy squatters, pyromaniacal militants―and the extent to which any of these can truly withstand and influence the cold demands of contemporary capitalism. All the while, a mysterious cybernetic book of clairvoyance beckons, and trusted allies start to disappear.
Entwining comic-book villains with cultural critiques, Eugene Lim’s Dear Cyborgs is a fleet-footed literary exploration of power, friendship, and creativity. Ambitious and knowing, it combines detective pulps, subversive philosophy, and Hollywood chase scenes, unfolding like the composites and revelations of a dream.

Dear Cyborgs: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Lim, Eugene

Humor & Satire

FSG Originals

Fiction. Marooned in a small Midwest town shortly after his divorce, Jim Fog succumbs to purposelessness and nostalgia while his ex, Sarah Car, has moved to New York City with the ambition of skipping over any mourning for their marriage. And old friend, ignorant himself of his action's consequences, enables the two protagonists to move through and haunt each other's lives. Eventually, the momentum of Fog and Car's alternating narratives push the two characters out of their static life-cages towards different unreal conclusions, and the narratives' shifting styles finally find a stunning equilibrium in a troubled and subversive escapism. Gary Lutz writes, "Eugene Lim renders the uncanny convergences of the lives of partners and strangers in a language entirely new. This is a deep, engulfing novel of breathtaking, even spooking precision--an altogether heady and heart-shaking debut."

Fog & Car

Contemporary

Ellipsis Press

Fiction. Asian American Studies. "Beautifully written, so precise and accurate to real life that it is (fantastically) convincing, Eugene Lim's THE STRANGERS, with its multiple interwoven strands, reveals one surprising character and relationship after the next, and culminates in a skillfully devised and satisfying resolution. A fascinating and engrossing tale."—Lydia Davis "What an astonishing book! Beautiful, original, with delicious surprises lurking at the heart of sentences, of events, of all the engines of communication."—Harry Mathews "THE STRANGERS is like a cabinet of curiosities put together by Georges Perec and Andrei Biely, hilarious and utterly seductive, a sharp commentary on the social and political architecture we cling to at our peril. And yet, while pulling the rug out from under the reader, Eugene Lim's book is a total pleasure."—Susan Daitch "To place the storytelling act at the center of a novel is a risky strategy: the stories must fascinate. Lim's stories do (except those few that he deliberately effaces as if to give a graphic representation of self-erasure). They have the exoticism, emotional authenticity, and intellectual depth to ensure that the reader will be enthralled."—Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Strangers

United States

Black Square Editions

Search History oscillates between a wild cyberdog chase and lunch-date monologues as Eugene Lim deconstructs grieving and storytelling with uncanny juxtapositions and subversive satire. Frank Exit is dead--or is he? While eavesdropping on two women discussing a dog-sitting gig over lunch, a bereft friend comes to a shocking realization: Frank has been reincarnated as a dog! This epiphany launches a series of adventures--interlaced with digressions about AI-generated fiction, virtual reality, Asian American identity in the arts, and lost parents--as an unlikely cast of accomplices and enemies pursues the mysterious canine. In elliptical, propulsive prose, Search History plumbs the depths of personal and collective consciousness, questioning what we consume, how we grieve, and the stories we tell ourselves.

Search History

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Coffee House Press

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Books by Lim, Eugene