Paradise Logic

'I loved this wild, roaming marvel of a debut , acutely aware that I was reading a book completely unlike any other, admiring this voice which metabolises perennial concerns about love, identity and gender into some of the weirdest and funniest prose imaginable . It’s a privilege to spend time with Sophie Kemp’s singular mind' - Megan Nolan , author of Ordinary Human Failings and Acts of Desperation

'I saw Kemp reading from this book in New York and picked it up as fast as I could. It’s a totally surreal? account of a woman who wants to be the world’s best girlfriend. It’s bizarre and grotesque, and some lines I had to? reread and be like, “What the fuck?”, which is always exciting. It’s incredibly well written?. I love a book that’s ?funny while being devastating?. I don’t know if it changed my view on relationships but it definitely made me grateful for the ?one I have.' - Cat Cohen

'I loved this wild, roaming marvel of a debut , acutely aware that I was reading a book completely unlike any other, admiring this voice which metabolises perennial concerns about love, identity and gender into some of the weirdest and funniest prose imaginable . It’s a privilege to spend time with Sophie Kemp’s singular mind' - Megan Nolan , author of Ordinary Human Failings and Acts of Desperation

'I saw Kemp reading from this book in New York and picked it up as fast as I could. It’s a totally surreal? account of a woman who wants to be the world’s best girlfriend. It’s bizarre and grotesque, and some lines I had to? reread and be like, “What the fuck?”, which is always exciting. It’s incredibly well written?. I love a book that’s ?funny while being devastating?. I don’t know if it changed my view on relationships but it definitely made me grateful for the ?one I have.' - Cat Cohen

'Sophie Kemp’s absurd, horny, and epic debut had me asking questions like: Is existence meaningless and random? And most importantly , how can I make my eyes resemble those of an introspective family pet?'

' The funniest book of the year and one of the smartest '

' Paradise Logic is an astonishment, and the odyssey of Reality Kahn reads like the strangest, funniest, most profound, vibrant, and trippy dream you ever had , except it’s not just a dream, it’s a work of art, deeply real and dangerously alive . A great writer is bornth'

'The 21st C heir apparent to Kathy Acker . Reality sets about her quest with a Quixotean determination. A wildly propulsive novel and delight to behold'

'Offbeat, hilarious, and often dismal, Paradise Logic is the excavation of heterosexual desire our age deserves'

Sophie Kemp's surreal novel will be top of our reading pile

'The style is George Saunders meets Ottessa Moshfegh , filtered through – at a rough guess – 4chan, mumblecore and 18th-century marriage manuals… Kemp knows exactly what she’s doing, and tonally the novel is a feat, expertly switching between laughter, shock and heartache , sometimes in a heartbeat'

‘ Smart, jarring and wickedly funny … Kemp’s language is profane and outrageously camp, blending punk-infused chutzpah, feminist irony, meme-worthy disclosures and mic drops with sick, unsettling humour… I adored this novel: it’s a clever and wholly original skewering of the modern dating landscape, our obsession with true love , and the outlandish lengths we’ll go to in its pursuit’


'Deranged, but also ecstatic and weird and brimming over with the possibilities of what language can do . Imagine Vladimir Nabokov as a manic pixie dream girl, and you’ll be halfway there'


Sophie Frances Kemp was born in 1996 in Schenectady, New York. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Granta , The Paris Review , Vogue , GQ , Pitchfork , and The Baffler , among others. She received her MFA in fiction at Columbia University, where she now teaches in the writing program. She lives in Brooklyn.