My Weil
by Lars Iyer
"Police helicopters overhead."
- Lars Iyer, My Weil
My Weil by Lars Iyer is a razor sharp, darkly hilarious satire of contemporary academia, intellectual alienation and the desperate search for meaning in a bleak world.
The novel is set at a decaying post-1992 university in Manchester, and follows a group of disillusioned PhD students studying “Disaster Studies.” They drink themselves silly, wander the rain-drenched ruins of industry, and churn out impenetrable theory, all the while knowing their academic prospects are pretty much nil. Their cynical, stagnant world is shattered by the arrival of Mariska, a brilliant, austere student obsessed with the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil. Mariska’s sincere embrace of Weil’s ideas about suffering, grace, and self-neglect is set against the ironic indifference of the group, creating a sense of intrigue and existential unease.
View all my reviews
The novel is set at a decaying post-1992 university in Manchester, and follows a group of disillusioned PhD students studying “Disaster Studies.” They drink themselves silly, wander the rain-drenched ruins of industry, and churn out impenetrable theory, all the while knowing their academic prospects are pretty much nil. Their cynical, stagnant world is shattered by the arrival of Mariska, a brilliant, austere student obsessed with the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil. Mariska’s sincere embrace of Weil’s ideas about suffering, grace, and self-neglect is set against the ironic indifference of the group, creating a sense of intrigue and existential unease.
View all my reviews
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