The Word Exchange

'Spine-tingling' New York Times

'A fast-paced, thrill-a-minute debut novel' New Yorker

'Graedon knows how to ratchet up mystery' Esquire

WORDS ARE UNDER THREAT.

IT'S TIME TO FIGHT BACK...

Imagine a world without words.

A world in which books, libraries and newspapers are things of the past.

A world where personal devices provide all you could want or need.

Anana Johnson and her father, Doug, are hard at work on the final edition that will ever be printed of the English Dictionary. But one evening, Doug disappears and Anana unearths a single written clue: ALICE.

In the battle to save her father, Anana discovers secret societies, dark incinerator rooms and underground passages.

Above all, she finds a world that faces ruin from the dark side of technology.

“Clever, breathless and sportively Hegelian . . . THE WORD EXCHANGE combines the jaunty energy of youngish adult fiction (boyfriend trouble, parent conflicts, peer pressure and post-collegiate jitters) with the spine-tingling chill of the science-fiction conspiracy genre”

Wow! This highly addictive future noir is also terrifyingly prescient. Set in a parallel New York filled with language viruses, pneumatic tubes, and heartbreak, Alena Graedon's book is luminous and haunting at every turn. I will never look at words in quite the same way-and neither will you. - Reif Larsen, author of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

Alena Graedon's spectacular debut is a story for our age of 'accelerated obsolescence.' A genuinely scary and funny mystery about linguistic slippage and disturbance, it's also a moving meditation on our sometimes comic, sometimes desperate struggles to speak, and to listen, and to mean something to one another.To borrow Graedon's own invention, THE WORD EXCHANGE is 'synchronic'--a gorgeous genre mashup that offers readers the pleasures of noir, science fiction, romance and philosophy. It's an unforgettable joyride across the thin ice of language - Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Imaginative, layered, and highly original, THE WORD EXCHANGE is an engagingly creepy story of technology gone wrong and a clever meditation on the enduring mysteries of language and love - Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Age of Miracles

Alena Graedon graduated from Brown in 2002 and received her MFA in 2007 from Columbia. She worked as the Manager of Literary Awards and Membership at the PEN America Center before leaving to finish THE WORD EXCHANGE, her first novel, with the help of fellowships at several artist colonies. Her writing has been translated into nine languages. She lives in Brooklyn.

'Spine-tingling' New York Times 'A fast-paced, thrill-a-minute debut novel' New Yorker 'Graedon knows how to ratchet up mystery' Esquire WORDS ARE UNDER THREAT. IT'S TIME TO FIGHT BACK... Imagine a world without words. A world in which books, libraries and newspapers are things of the past. A world where personal devices provide all you could want or need.Anana Johnson and her father, Doug, are hard at work on the final edition that will ever be printed of the English Dictionary. But one evening, Doug disappears and Anana unearths a single written clue: ALICE.In the battle to save her father, Anana discovers secret societies, dark incinerator rooms and underground passages. Above all, she finds a world that faces ruin from the dark side of technology.

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