Kapow!

Unfolding, turning and spinning, Kapow! is a new book by best-selling British writer Adam Thirlwell. Kapow! takes place in the thick of the Arab Spring, guided by the highspeed monologue of an unnamed narrator – over-doped, over-caffeinated, over-weight – trying to make sense of this history in real time: with 24 hour broadcasts, YouTube films, lesbian bars in London’s East End and far too many newspaper clippings. A clever, funny and bitingly critical cultural commentary, using spinning digressions to tell the stories of a group of interconnected characters in London and Egypt, each transformed by the idea of revolution. Beautifully and thoughtfully designed by Studio Frith, hailed by the New York Times as the “go-to graphic designer”, Kapow! asks readers to open and unfold pages, to follow text leaking in and out of paragraphs, to discover more and more visual surprises, while progressively becoming part of and lost within the narrator’s giddy digressions. Kapow! is a beautifully crafted object told in Thirlwell’s uniquely acrobatic voice: a visually immersive storytelling experience like no other.