Y/N: A Novel

"Wondrous and weird." --New York Times
"Gorgeous." --New Yorker
"High Brow x Brilliant." --NY Mag (Approval Matrix)
"So good it's hard to believe." --New York Times Book Review Podcast
"Rare." --n+1
"A true novel of the era." --Elle
"Piercing, feverish, and frequently astonishing." --Entertainment Weekly
"Utterly brilliant, shining, and mesmerizing." --Cosmopolitan
"Freakish and hallucinatory." --Vulture
"Absurdly funny." --Ms. Magazine
"Savage." --Vanity Fair
"Playful, immersive yet unreal." --Esquire
"Riveting and innovative." --TIME
"Curious, cerebral . . . with moments of tender poetry." --Times Literary Supplement
"It."--SSENSE
"Sophisticated." --Chicago Review of Books
"Strange, haunting, and undeniably beautiful." --Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"One of the most daring novels of the year." --Bookpage (Starred Review)
"Humorously perverse." --Booklist
"A fuck yes." --LitHub
"Tailor-made for the present moment." --Kirkus Review
"Witty, self-knowing and, extraordinarily, far beyond categorization." --The Times (UK)
"A witty, worldly romp." --Philadelphia Inquirer
"Surreal and stylish." --Debutiful
"Highly literary." --Necessary Fiction
"Eschewing labels, genres and, most certainly, expectations." --Shelf Awareness
"Luxuriously indecipherable." --Tor.com

It's as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field; on livestreams, as fans from around the world comment in dozens of languages; even on skincare products endorsed by the wildly popular Korean boyband, of which Moon is the youngest, most luminous member. Seized by ineffable desire, our unnamed narrator begins writing Y/N fanfic--in which you, the reader, insert [Your/Name] and play out an intimate relationship with the unattainable star.

Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant, Y/N is a provocative literary debut about the universal longing for transcendence and the tragic struggle to assert one's singular story amidst the amnesiac effects of globalization. Esther Yi's prose unsettles the boundary between high and mass art, exploding our expectations of a novel about "identity" and offering in its place a sui generis picture of the loneliness that afflicts modern life.