Dear Dickhead — Virginie Despentes

A New Yorker best book of 2024 so far | A Financial Times Best Translated Book of 2024

Library Science September book club pick | A Vulture most anticipated book of the fall
One of The New York Times' 24 works of fiction to read this fall | A Guardian best translated fiction pick | A Town & Country must-read fall book

"It's a thrill to hear the characters develop on the page . . . One of the better portrayals of addiction I've encountered in literature, up there with books by Jean Rhys and Leslie Jamison." ―Joumana Khatib, The New York Times Book Review

"Engrossing . . . Full of emotional suspense." ―Pamela Druckerman, Financial Times

The French novel taking the world by storm: an ultracontemporary Dangerous Liaisons about sex, feminism, and addiction.

Dear D******d,
I read your post on Insta. You're like a pigeon shitting on my shoulder as you flap past. It's s****y and unpleasant. Waah, waah, waah, I'm a pissy little pantywaist, no one loves me so I whimper like a Chihuahua in the hope someone will notice me. Congratulations: you've got your fifteen minutes of fame! You want proof? I'm writing to you.

Oscar is a B-list novelist in his forties. He used to be an alcoholic and a cokehead, but now he keeps himself busy by ranting on social media. When Rebecca, an actress whose looks he insulted, sends him an angry email, they strike up a combative correspondence -- at the very moment that Oscar is accused of sexual harassment by his former publicist. What ensues is a no-holds-barred conversation about life under the patriarchy, and above all about addiction -- to drugs, to alcohol, to the internet, to rage.

Virginie Despentes, the celebrated author of King Kong Theory, has written her breakthrough book: a Dangerous Liaisons for our time. We follow Rebecca and Oscar as they develop an unlikely friendship and argue over questions of right and wrong in a city -- Paris -- where pleasure, excess, and freedom rule the day, or used to. Dear D******d is a guns-blazing novel about a culture that makes men and women sick, and about how the search for feeling leaves us addicted to what makes us feel. The result is a provocative and unmissable book from the author hailed by The Guardian as France's “rock and roll Zola.”