“We are real in an unreal reality, which we’re told is really real and that we’re actually unreal.”
Joanna Kavenna is a daring novelist and essayist who dismantles the illusions of modern life by fusing philosophical insight with literary imagination. Named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists in 2013 and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024, she forges narratives that challenge our understanding of reality, identity, and technology.
Her major works include The Ice Museum (a gripping travel memoir), The Birth of Love (an epic exploration of childbirth and belief), A Field Guide to Reality (a surreal map of existential crisis), and Zed: a dystopian satire of surveillance, algorithmic control, and corporate prediction. Zed was hailed as “a delirious satire about the corrosive effects of technology” by The Guardian, and shows a predictive regime’s fragile grip unravelling in unexpected human acts of freedom.
“A brilliantly unpredictable novelist: whatever you think she might do next, she doesn’t.” — The Guardian
