Worst. Person. Ever.

A razor-sharp portrait of a morally bankrupt and gleefully wicked modern man, Worst. Person. Ever. is Douglas Coupland’s gloriously filthy, side-splittingly funny and unforgettable new novel.

An outrageous comic riot, delivered as a tear-inducing funny and pitch-black farce ... For every laugh here, there’s a haunting, echoing scream in the distance. The plot is unbridled romp ... It is hard to describe, out of context, quite how funny Coupland’s novel can be.

Worst. Person. Ever. is very much a return to form. It had me laughing out loud on the bus to work.

There are gloriously unquotable remarks and fantastically lurid images on every page. Gunt’s mind is a super-sewer in which it is a pleasure to swim. You can’t help giggling, constantly. Worst. Person. Ever. may be a raging bonfire of inanities but it contains some of Coupland’s finest writing since Shampoo Planet.

There are some clever plot twists and fine comedy set pieces.

Worst. Person. Ever. succeeds by virtue of its verbal energy, the brio of its invention, the snappiness with which successive gags and ever more appalling atrocities are piled on.

Coupland has penned a bitterly funny tale of our time and created one of the grossest characters to deliver it.

Worst. Person. Ever., challenges the present-day with excess, satire, and biting critique

Douglas Coupland (pronounced KOHP-lend) (born 30 December 1961) is a Canadian writer, designer and visual artist. His first novel was the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. Since then, Coupland has written twelve more novels, which have been published in most languages. He has written and performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company and is a columnist for the Financial Times. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, e-flux, Dis and Vice. In 2000, after a decade of generating web graphics, Coupland amplified his visual art production and has recently had two separate museum retrospectives: 'Everywhere Is Anywhere Is Anything Is Everything' at the Royal Vancouver Art Gallery, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art; and 'Bit Rot' at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam and Villa Stuck in Munich. In 2015 and 2016, Coupland was an artist-in-residence in the Paris Google Cultural Institute.

A razor-sharp portrait of a morally bankrupt and gleefully wicked modern man, Worst. Person. Ever. is Douglas Coupland's gloriously filthy, side-splittingly funny and unforgettable novel. 
 
Meet Raymond Gunt. A decent chap who tries to do the right thing. Or, to put it another way, the worst person ever: a foul-mouthed, misanthropic cameraman, trailing creditors, ex-wives and unhappy homeless people in his wake. Men dislike him, women flee from him. 
 
Worst. Person. Ever. is a deeply unworthy book about a dreadful human being with absolutely no redeeming social value. Gunt, in the words of the author, "is a living, walking, talking, hot steaming pile of pure id." He's a B-unit cameraman who enters an amusing downward failure spiral that takes him from London to Los Angeles and then on to an obscure island in the Pacific where a major American TV network is shooting a Survivor-style reality show. Along the way, Gunt suffers multiple comas and unjust imprisonment, is forced to re-enact the ‘Angry Dance’ from the movie Billy Elliot and finds himself at the centre of a nuclear war. We also meet Raymond's upwardly failing sidekick, Neal, as well as Raymond's ex-wife, Fiona, herself ‘an atomic bomb of pain’. 
 
Even though he really puts the ‘anti’ in anti-hero, you may find Raymond Gunt an oddly likeable character.

Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People

A dark, funny and satirical collection of fairy tales from the bestselling author of Jpod, Generation X and Generation A

Seven pants-peeingly funny stories featuring seven evil characters you can't help but love:Douglas Coupland's stories are illustrated with dark charm by Graham Roumieu in a collaboration that brings togethertwo of Canada's wittiest creators for the first time. Put yourtherapist on speed dial and read them with pleasure. 
 
A cast of unlovable miscreants who unleash their dark, unruly and antisocial desires on every page:They are Donald, the Incredibly Hostile Juice Box;Kevin, the Hobo Minivan with Extremely Low Morals;Brandon, the Action Figure with Issues; Sandra, the TrulyDreadful Babysitter; Hans, the Weird Exchange Student;Cindy, the Terrible Role Model; and Mr. Fraser, the UndeadSubstitute Teacher. 
 
A lot of laughs-of the evil, twisted kind:Definitely inappropriate for young people.

Douglas Coupland. Born on a Canadian NATO base in Germany, Coupland is the author of such bestsellers as Generation A, JPod and eleven other novels, along with non-fiction works including a recent short biography of Marshall McLuhan. His work has been translated into thirty-five languages and published in most countries around the world. He is also a visual artist, sculptor, furniture and fashion designer, and screenwriter. 
 
Graham Roumieu. The creator of the faux Bigfoot autobiographies In MeOwn Words, Me Write Book and I NotDead, Roumieu is also the author of some non-Bigfoot-related books such as Cat &amp; Gnome and 101 Ways to KillYour Boss. Since he started work in 2001, his illustrations have appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Men's Health, regularly in the Globe and Mail, and many other places. 
 
www.coupland.com 
www.roumieu.com

Seven pants-peeingly funny stories featuring seven evil characters you can't help but love: Douglas Coupland's stories are illustrated with dark charm by Graham Roumieu in a collaboration that brings together two of Canada's wittiest creators for the first time. Put your therapist on speed dial and read them with pleasure. 
 
A cast of unlovable miscreants who unleash their dark, unruly and antisocial desires on every page: They are Donald, the Incredibly Hostile Juice Box; Kevin, the Hobo Minivan with Extremely Low Morals; Brandon, the Action Figure with Issues; Sandra, the Truly Dreadful Babysitter; Hans, the Weird Exchange Student;Cindy, the Terrible Role Model; and Mr. Fraser, the Undead Substitute Teacher. 
 
A lot of laughs-of the evil, twisted kind: Definitely inappropriate for young people.

Player One

From the bestselling author of Jpod, Generation X and Generation A comes a dystopian Breakfast Club for the twenty-first century.

Enjoyable . . .The way Coupland moulds his fiction from the throwaway debris of North American popular culture is quite brilliant . . . Coupland has always been a highly compassionate writer, concerned mainly with the ways in which affluent people's lives are cheapened by popular culture

The pulse quickens as his principal characters hunker down for some besieged truth-telling...Dynamic engagement is the real meat of this slim but provocative novel

As always with Coupland, the ideas come thick and fast, they're quirky, often funny and frequently profound

As an observer with a knack of coining memorable phrases he is as sharp as ever . . . Coupland's gift from comedy is evident in the combination of bathos and farce . . . Shows Coupland as a first-rate thinker on what technology in its present form does, and might do, to consciousness, identity and individuality

DOUGLAS COUPLAND is the author of the international bestseller JPOD and twelve other novels including the era-defining GENERATION X and, most recently, GENERATION A. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages. He is also a visual artist and sculptor, furniture designer and screenwriter. He lives and works in Vancouver.

A real-time five-hour story set in an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster. Five disparate people are trapped inside: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rick, the down-on-his-luck airport lounge bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a cool Hitchcock blonde incapable of true human contact; and finally a mysterious voice known as Player One. Slowly, each reveals the truth about themselves while the world as they know it comes to an end. 
 
In the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and J.G. Ballard, Coupland explores the modern crises of time, human identity, society, religion and the afterlife. The book asks as many questions as it answers and readers will leave the story with no doubt that we are in a new phase of existence as a species - and that there is no turning back.

Generation A

From the author of JPod and Generation X, the bestselling generational classic, comes a dazzling new work that reimagines the very act of reading and storytelling in a crazed digital world.

[A] visionary author . . . rock'n'roll yet deadly serious, a caustic social commentator and delineator of the near future . . . He's caught midway between technophilia and technophobia . . . there's no better place to be for a contemporary prophet

A shrewd observer of modernity . . . His latest novel is a quirky glance into the near future . . . an earnest plea for authentic communication in an evermore isolated world . . . Coupland touches on an ambitious array of topics . . . enlivened by observations about the banalities of popular culture

A paean to good old-fashioned storytelling, of which the novel itself is an inventive and unexpectedly moving example

[An] intoxicating cocktail of literary influences . . . Coupland [is] a joy to read . . . A globally ambitious novel, and all the better for it

Fans of Coupland will rejoice . . . Coupland's audacious flights of fancy, his laugh-out-loud dialogue and his magnificent ability to bring it all back to storytelling and orange-flavour tang, they're all here . . . Such a treat

Generation A hints at an idealism, a generation that could be at the beginning of something, although it may be too passive and self-involved to realise it . . . Beneath the typically brilliant, sharp wisecracks and riffs about fashion products, relationships and lifestyle, there is tangible outrage at the violation of Nature . . . Moving and meaningful

He's still funny [and] writes great social commentary

He is a brilliant social commentator and a wit of our times

Coupland is a smart, witty writer...The short stories in the second half, like those in Generation X, are a delight.

A thoughtful book, abuzz with information-age gadgets and connectivity, and housing a sturdy scientific conspiracy. It also manages to be stylistically light but intellectually provocative

'[a] page turner...a series of profound, and mystifying, stories within a stoy that will confound and delight...Another confirmed bestseller

Eighteen years on from Generation X, Coupland still satirises pop culture better than anyone. This globe-spanning tale, set in the near future, is masterfully told and often hilarious

With this exceptional sequel to Generation X, Douglas Coupland may be one of the smartest, wittiest writers around . . . He is a terrifically good writer . . . Generation A is set in the near future . . . Bees have become extinct, but then five people are stung . . . It is the attempt to get to the bottom of this mystery that brings the five together on an Alaskan island where they are made to tell stories to one another. Coupland weaves common elements across these tales and into the main narrative: large themes . . . comic themes . . . existential themes . . . There is a compelling plot . . . Coupland scatters his smartly satirical observations throughout . . . This is a clever, brilliant book - and it's loads better than Generation X . . . funny and profound . . . Straight A . . . (Coupland) deserves top marks for his latest novel

Coupland is a master at creating eccentric, lonely characters and illuminating the mundaneness of dull lives in our celebrity-obsessed, technology-driven world . . . Ideas bounce of his writing like sparks off a live electrical wire

[A] tour-de-force myth of the near future . . . As ever, the writing is sharp and witty, displaying Coupland's keen eye for cultural trends and an awareness of the ever-expanding limits of technological advancement

Highly recommended. Like Murakami in thriller-trope mode. Go for it

Ambitious and weird . . . genuinely experimental

Unusual circumstances ensue in this latest read from the brilliant social commentator

Coupland is a smart, witty writer . . . A delight

Coupland juggles some fascinating ideas . . . Equal parts humor and revelation...An intelligent look at pop and digital culture

From the very first pages it jumps out: the language, the preoccupations, the political and technological references, the humour - they're all so now . . . Scintillating . . . I must admit I read the novel enviously. Oh, to have written something so clever, funny, heartfelt and original . . . The narration is layered, there are passages that are very funny, others that are wise, and throughout the language crackles with vitality . . . In the future, if people are curious about what it was like to live in our times, in the early 21st century, they will do well to read Douglas Coupland

Superbly entertaining stuff. Coupland's dialogue is witty and spiky and makes you laugh out loud . . . Coupland just can't resist making his characters as smart as he is, which is very smart indeed. He's one of the few writers who has really grasped what different times we live in . . . But Coupland's personality as a writer isn't just smart, it is also charming humane and fundamentally optimistic. A pure pleasure

A delightful Decameron of a book . . . rich, educative and even consoling

One of the most popular serious writers of our time

DOUGLAS COUPLAND was born on a NATO base in Germany in 1961. He is the author of the international bestseller JPOD and ten other novels including THE GUM THIEF, HEY NOSTRADAMUS!, ALL FAMILIES ARE PSYCHOTIC AND GENERATION X. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages and published in most countries around the world. He is also a visual artist and sculptor, furniture designer and screenwriter. He lives and works in Vancouver.

In the near future bees are extinct - until five unconnected individuals, in different parts of the world, are stung. Immediately snatched up by ominous figures in hazmat suits, interrogated searately in neutral Ikea-like chambers, and then released as 15-minute-celebrities into a world driven almost entirely by the internet, these five unforgettable people endure a barrage of unusual and highly 21st-century circumstances. A charismatic scientist with dubious motives eventually brings the quintet together, and their shared experience unites them in a way they could never have imagined. 
 
Generation A mirrors the structure of 1991's Generation X as it champions the act of reading and storytelling as one of the few defences we still have against the constant bombardment of the senses in a digital world. Like much of Coupland's writing, it occupies the perplexing hinterland between optimism about the future and everyday, apocalyptic paranoia, and is his most ambitious and entertaining novel to date.

Douglas Coupland

Coupland adopts…an Andy Warholish mode, somewhere between mocking, lamenting, celebrating even the most troubling aspects of postmodernity.

[Coupland’s] new collection has its basis in that rarefied literary form, the art catalogue … [he] is at his best when he muses on new opportunities and challenges presented by technology.

[T]he Vancouver-based tech-seer, critic, author and artist again proves himself to be one of the most entertaining and thoughtful futurologists on the planet.

Bit Rot is wry and wise, terrifying and hilarious, and it makes us LOL while still using “LOL” correctly.

Every page is full of wit, surprise and delight

In Bit Rot, Douglas Coupland explores the different ways in which twentieth-century notions of the future are being shredded, and creates a gem of the digital age. Reading the stories and essays in Bit Rot is like bingeing on Netflix . . . you can't stop with just one. 
 
‘Bit rot’ is a term used in digital archiving to describe the way digital files can spontaneously and quickly decompose. As Coupland writes, ‘bit rot also describes the way my brain has been feeling since 2000, as I shed older and weaker neurons and connections and enhance new and unexpected ones’. 
 
Bit Rot the book explores the ways humanity tries to make sense of our shifting consciousness. Coupland, just like the Internet, mixes forms to achieve his ends. Short fiction is interspersed with essays on all aspects of modern life. The result is addictively satisfying for Coupland’s legion of fans hungry for his observations about our world. For almost three decades, his unique pattern recognition has powered his fiction, and his phrase-making. Every page of Bit Rot is full of wit, surprise and delight.

Douglas Coupland

Praise for Bit Rot

Coupland adopts…an Andy Warholish mode, somewhere between mocking, lamenting, celebrating even the most troubling aspects of postmodernity.

[Coupland’s] new collection has its basis in that rarefied literary form, the art catalogue … [he] is at his best when he muses on new opportunities and challenges presented by technology.

[T]he Vancouver-based tech-seer, critic, author and artist again proves himself to be one of the most entertaining and thoughtful futurologists on the planet.

Coupland adopts…an Andy Warholish mode, somewhere between mocking, lamenting, celebrating even the most troubling aspects of postmodernity.

[Coupland’s] new collection has its basis in that rarefied literary form, the art catalogue … [he] is at his best when he muses on new opportunities and challenges presented by technology.

[T]he Vancouver-based tech-seer, critic, author and artist again proves himself to be one of the most entertaining and thoughtful futurologists on the planet.

Coupland adopts…an Andy Warholish mode, somewhere between mocking, lamenting, celebrating even the most troubling aspects of postmodernity.

[Coupland’s] new collection has its basis in that rarefied literary form, the art catalogue … [he] is at his best when he muses on new opportunities and challenges presented by technology.

[T]he Vancouver-based tech-seer, critic, author and artist again proves himself to be one of the most entertaining and thoughtful futurologists on the planet.

Books by Douglas Coupland

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