RaveAsymptotePhenotypes offers few answers—and expecting them from a single work of fiction would be futile. Instead, Scott opens the floodgates to a myriad of questions, probing the uncomfortable topics that his fictional (but all too real) bureaucrats would rather leave undisturbed. Posed as the novel’s eyes and ears, Federico is the lens through which we view these issues, and the means by which we understand the racially charged situation in Brazil ... It is this personal angle that brings the novel’s broad, sweeping themes into sharp focus. But the novel’s most striking feature—one that jumps out from the first page—is Scott’s sprawling and idiosyncratic writing style. He favours long sentences (in fact, the novel’s second sentence spans twenty-one lines and is incredibly broad in scope), but the writing is taut and polished, never rambling ... Phenotypes is innovative, deftly precise in its form, and utterly profound in its content. Scott’s work in bringing contemporary urgencies into fiction is uncomfortable and often unsettling, but necessary—and, ultimately, unforgettable.
Andri Snær Magnason trans. by Lytton Smith
RaveAsymptote JournalIn On Time and Water—part memoir, part interview, part impassioned treatise on the future of our planet—Andri Snær Magnason follows the young Swedish activist [Greta Thunberg\'s] example, casting aside convention and delving into the emotional side of the climate crisis. In doing so, he embarks on a deeply humane and vulnerable exploration of what manmade climate change truly means for the planet—and for us ... compelling hybrid ... In a way, On Time and Water could read as a protest—an act of defiance against the emotionally barren landscape of climate rhetoric ... Read this unforgettable book to understand the enormity of the task ahead of us, and to have your mind—and heart—irrevocably changed.
