
An Oral History of Atlantis
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By:
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Ed Park
About this listen
Gilt-edged stories that slice clean through the mundanity of modern life, from the author of Same Bed Different Dreams, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
“Ed Park is one of the funniest writers working today, and among the most humane.”—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
In “Machine City” a college student’s chance role in a friend’s movie blurs the line between his character and his true self. (Is he a robot?) In “Slide to Unlock” a man comes to terms with his life via the passwords he struggles to remember in extremis. (What’s his mom’s name backward?) And in “Weird Menace” a director and faded movie star gab about science fiction, bad costume choices, and lost loves on a commentary track for a B-film from the ’80s that neither remembers all that well.
In Ed Park’s utterly original collection, An Oral History of Atlantis, characters bemoan their fleeting youth, focus on their breathing, meet cute, break up, write book reviews, translate ancient glyphs, bid on stuff online, whale watch, and once in a while find solace in the sublime. Throughout, Park deploys his trademark wit to create a world both strikingly recognizable and delightfully other. Spanning a quarter century, these sixteen stories tell the absurd truth about our lives. They capture the moment when the present becomes the past—and are proof positive that Ed Park is one of the most imaginative and insightful writers working today.
©2025 Ed Park (P)2025 Random House AudioCritic reviews
“Funny, tragic, winsome screwball science-fiction prose poetry of ‘maximum lexical density’ that’s pure pleasure to read.”—Sarah Manguso, author of Liars
“What’s the collective noun for a school of stories so bright and brilliant, they ripple with humor, compassion, and wonder? Call them an ‘Ed Park.’ An Oral History of Atlantis will continue to delight us, long after the flood.”—Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark
“To speak of Park’s creativity is also to speak of his humanity—empathy is a function of the imagination, of course, and it makes sense that a mind capable of dreaming these worlds and sister verses would also be able to endow them with spirits as vivid and complex as our own. It’s dazzling, this steady carousel of delight and stunned awe. Park is one of the funniest writers working today, and among the most humane.”—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
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