Praise for New Waves

“A brilliant meditation on death and grief in the age of the internet. New Waves is full of modern noise and complicated love. Its prismatic, futuristic take on race and identity are a thrill to read. The book is funny and sad in equal measure, inventive, self-aware, full of insight, but also entirely enjoyable.”—Tommy Orange, author of There There

“In New Waves, a grieving young man dives into the dizzying kaleidoscope of twenty-first-century online culture, trying to understand his lost friend and the difference between our real lives and our virtual ones—or is there one? Kevin Nguyen’s debut is a knowing, witty, and thought-provoking exploration of love, modern isolation, and what it means to exist—especially as a person of color—in our increasingly digital age.” —Celeste Ng,  author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere

“E.M. Forster’s mandate was to ‘only connect.’ Kevin Nguyen shows us that in our brave new digital world, the best way to do that might be to disconnect. The result is New Waves, a sleek, stylish novel that weaves between disaffection and desire.”—Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees

“Kevin Nguyen’s New Waves collapses every tired distinction about the internet. In this novel of relationships, race, and loss, everything is both permanent and ephemeral—technology both preserves and buries culture, and the people who ghost you can also haunt you. With his swift, funny, and merciless prose, Nguyen smartly dissects how life online may be digital, but it’s far from binary.”—Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens

“New Waves is a delight and a gamble and a treasure and a miracle. Nguyen’s novel broke my heart. It made me laugh harder than any book reasonably should. It’s everything I could possibly want in a story—but it’s also that rarest, most unachievable of things: New Waves is truly something new.”—Bryan Washington, author of Lot

“New Waves is a virtuosic debut novel delving into the wild vicissitudes of living with, and on, the internet. I’ll read anything by Kevin Nguyen.”—R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

“Mordant and fiercely smart, Kevin Nguyen’s New Waves is a mystery within a mystery within a love story and it left me haunted, breathless. An ambitious, unsparing, exhilarating debut.”—Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me and Dare Me

“New Waves is not one novel, but several: an acerbic portrait of startup culture, a circa-now account of twentysomething life in New York City, a moving exploration of grief, and a clear-eyed appraisal of race, sex, and privilege. Nguyen deserves our loudest applause.”—Ryan Chapman, author of Riots I Have Known

“I can’t tell any of my white friends about your book.”— Kevin’s mom