The Pale King

David Foster Wallace, who died in 2008, was the author of the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System. His final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011. He is also the author of the short-story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Girl with Curious Hair, and his non-fiction includes several essay collections and the full-length work Everything and More.

One of the strangest, saddest, most haunting things I've ever read Guardian Breathtakingly brilliant, funny, maddening and elegiac The New York Times Innovative, penetrating, forcefully intelligent fiction like Wallace's arrives once in a generation, if that Daily Telegraph In a different dimension to the tepid vapidities that pass as novels these days. Sentence for sentence, almost word for word, Wallace could out-write any of his peers Scotland on Sunday Rich and substantial and alive ... Wallace's finest work as a novelist Time A transfixing and hyper-literate descent into relentless, inescapable despair ... achingly funny, nothing short of sublime Publishers Weekly The Pale King contains what's sure to be some of the finest fiction of the year ... he was the closest thing we had to a recording angel GQ Sometimes as a critic the most important part of your job is to say: here, this is it, we've found it, someone's doing it. That someone was Wallace. He was the real thing Evening Standard The Pale King gave me a pleasure and excitement that I can describe only as biological. That is to say, the book produced in me that very rare, warm, head-to-toe tingling that comes with admission to a paradise of language and intelligence -- Joseph O' Neill The Times Remarkable -- Jonathan Derbyshire New Statesman Everyone who cares about literature should buy it The Age

One of the strangest, saddest, most haunting things I've ever read Guardian