Luminous Airplanes A Novel

"Luminous Airplanes" has a singular form: the novel, complete in itself, is accompanied by an online immersive text, which continues the story and complements it. Nearly 10 years in the making, La Farge's ambitious new work considers large worlds and small ones, love, memory, family, flying machines, dance music, and the end of the world.

Paul La Farge is the author of two novels: The Artist of the Missing (FSG, 1999) and Haussmann, or the Dis­tinction (FSG, 2001); and a book of imaginary dreams, The Facts of Win­ter. His short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Harper’s Magazine, Fence, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. His nonfiction appears in The Believer, Bookforum, Playboy, and Cabinet. He lives in upstate New York.

“A perfect figure eight of a book…Luminous Airplanes is brilliant, poignant, startling, hilarious….I loved it.”---Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! “Captivating…A wry, provocative, and often hilarious coming-of-age tale.”---The Boston Globe “A strange and salutary shock…Luminous Airplanes isn’t about disconnection and meaninglessness. It is about connection and significance…the ramifying, mysterious ways we human beings affect each other, from parent to child, invention to invention, generation to generation.”---The New York Times Book Review “La Farge tells his tale of homecoming compassionately but without sentimentality….Rather than submitting to the darkness of the sleeping bag that is modern fiction, La Farge encourages his readers to search the sky for the signs that herald the return of loved ones we’ve lost.”---Time Out (New York) “Beautiful…Calls to mind Haruki Murakami…A high-concept novel worth reading.”---The Economist