Men in Space

The first novel written by Booker finalist Tom McCarthy—acclaimed author of Remainder and C—Men in Space it is set in a Central Europe rapidly fragmenting after the fall of communism. It follows an oddball cast—dissolute bohemians, political refugees, a football referee, a disorientated police agent, and a stranded astronaut—as they chase a stolen painting from Sofia to Prague and onward. Planting the themes that McCarthy’s later works develop, here McCarthy questions the meaning of all kinds of space—physical, political, emotional, and metaphysical—as reflected in the characters’ various disconnections. What emerges is a vision of humanity adrift in history, and a world in a state of disintegration.
With an afterword by Simon Critchley, author of The Book of Dead Philosophers
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“McCarthy is fast revealing himself as a master craftsman who is steering the contemporary novel towards exciting territories.”
—The Observer (London)
“A confident and intelligent meditation on failed flights of transcendence.”
—Times Literary Supplement
“[McCarthy] is the standard-bearer of the avant-garde novel.”
—Slate
“A compelling and imaginative philosophical novel; McCarthy describes a world in which we are only occasionally party to brief, frightening intimations of greater forces at work, like the mysterious half-tuned transmissions at the ends of a radio dial.”
—Frieze Magazine
“McCarthy [is] a formidable talent as a novelist.”
—The Nation