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Dogma

A Novel

Lars Iyer

The sequel to the 2011 hit Spurious—which was acclaimed by The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post, which called it “fearsomely funny”—Dogma finds Lars and W. still, continually and without cease, arguing, although this time in a different country.

This time out, the duo embarks on a trip to the American Deep South, where, in company with a band of Canadians who may or may not be related to W., they attempt to form a new religion based on their philosophical studies. Their mission is soon derailed by their inability to take meaningful action, their endless bickering, the peculiar behavior of the natives, and by a true catastrophe: they can’t seem to find a liquor store that carries their brand of gin.

Part Nietzsche, part Monty Python, part Huckleberry Finn, Dogma is a novel as ridiculous and profound as religion itself.

 

LARS IYER is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is the author of two books on Blanchot (Blanchot's Communism: Art, Philosophy, Politics and Blanchot's Vigilance: Phenomenology, Literature, Ethics) and the novel Spurious, which was 3:AM Magazine's Book of the Year in 2011. He writes at his blog Spurious, and is also a contributor to Britain's leading literary blog, Ready, Steady, Book. His literary manifesto, "Nude in Your Hot Tub, Facing the Abyss" appeared in Post Road and The White Review.

PRAISE FOR DOGMA

"[Dogma] brings back W. and Lars, the most unlikely and absurd literary duo since Samuel Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon....Like Godot, this novel is a philosophical rumination, at once serious and playful, on the nature of existence and meaning. While it's comic, there is at bottom a profoundly tragic sense of the chaos and emptiness of modern life. Despair has rarely been so entertaining."
—Library Journal

"The United Kingdom has a Thomas Bernhard, and his name is Lars Iyer....Dogma is hilarious and bleak and loaded with illuminating, brilliant passages, and Iyer’s rapid-fire staccato prose is well-suited to the task. For those who like their dark, difficult books to be funny."
—Hey, Small Press!

 

PRAISE FOR SPURIOUS

“It’s wonderful. I'd recommend the book for its insults alone.”
—Sam Jordison, The Guardian

“Fearsomely funny.”
—The Washington Post
 
"Viciously funny."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"I'm still laughing, and it's days later.”
—The Los Angeles Times

"A tiny marvel.... [A] wonderfully monstrous creation."
—Steven Poole, The Guardian

“This novel has a seductive way of always doubling back on itself, scorching the earth but extracting its own strange brand of laughter from its commitment to despair.”
—The Believer

"Ought to be unreadable, but manages to be intelligent, wildly entertaining, and unexpectedly moving instead."
—The Millions