Julius Julius - by Aurora Stewart de Peña (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Summer - A Staff Pick at Boulder Bookstore, Carmichael's Bookstore, Flying Books, Parnassus Books, Politics & Prose Bookstore, Thank You Bookshop, and Type Books

With biting wit, Aurora Stewart de Peña satirizes the creative industry she's spent years in. From the people who brought you the invention of advertising comes Julius Julius, a rambling architectural wonder, outpost of the very first ad man of ancient Pompeii, built on the backs of generations of creative survivors who just want to lie on the floor of a conference room and cry about the lumber account without being sexually harassed.

A young, ambitious advertising maverick is sexually harassed by a ghost while trying to build an award-winning campaign for wood. A seasoned creative director confesses that his most famous work stars his best friend--who died while constructing the agency elevator. A socially anguished intern is furious that she's not getting credit for the Fisherman Jack Tuna rebrand, which was her idea.

All are employees of Julius Julius, a labyrinthine architectural wonder--an outpost of thevery first ad man of ancient Pompeii--built on the backs of generations of creative survivors who just want to lie on the floor under the conference room table and cry. A trio of voices from different eras tells the story of the world's oldest advertising agency, where the men in charge are deeply unexceptional, a 101-year-old archivist manages a cave full of ancient billboards, and there are bones in the walls.

This eerie, wry, and Lynchian tale wanders the halls and open-concept desk areas of the mythical agency, interrogating the process of stoking desire for a living. Stewart de Peña's debut novel reveals the cracks in the veneers of creative industries--and the crisis of consciousness underneath--in a work full of compassion, humour, and blonde sausage dogs.

Review Quotes

Finalist for the Atwood Gibson Fiction Prize
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year

"How do ad campaigns fundamentally affect the way we think--and how do ghosts help grease the wheels of corporate greed? Julius Julius, the quirky, ethereal debut novel by playwright and essayist Aurora Stewart de Peña, seeks to answer those questions in its haunting portrait of an advertising agency built atop a maze of mysterious catacombs. . . . A toothy, tender satire. . . . Two-parts Mad Men to one-part Doctor Strange, this time-travelling paradox of a novel will change the way you see the ads on your morning commute."
--The Globe and Mail

"Listen to this: 'Great advertising changes the way we see the world. Great advertising reflects culture, amplifying ideas that move us all forward.' Julius Julius does exactly this, if for 'advertising' we read 'literature: ' it changes how we see, it moves us forward. Fast-paced, strange, perky, and uncanny as the contemporary world, Stewart de Peña's novel in individual paragraphs creates a knowing magic realist world, rife with the misogyny and surrealism of late-stage capitalism and its corporations. Yet at the same time, it reads with the irreverent and delightful self-awareness of a smart campaign."
--2025 Atwood Gibson Prize Jury (Gary Barwin, Ali Bryan, and Jasmine Sealy)

"The mythic, expansive agency created by Stewart de Peña affords the author a lot of room to play. Julius Julius, as a result, is a singular blend of satire and magical realism inside the most unlikely of vessels: an office workplace novel."
--Elizabeth Polanco, Electric Literature

"The rambling, mythic Agency reminded me at times of the enormous bathhouse from Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, or the infinite labyrinth of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, but ultimately could only be the creation of the singular imaginative force that is Aurora Stewart de Peña. A delight."
--Jordan Tannahill, author of The Listeners

"Julius Julius is the kind of satire I love, full of gentle wisdom and refusing to laugh at our expense. With imagination and tenderness, Stewart de Peña finds poetry in a pecuniary world of brand narratives and consumer manipulation, and asks us to forgive ourselves for buying in. This is a strange and beautiful book that wears big questions lightly."
--Martha Schabas, author of My Face in the Light

"de Peña is pillar of the D.I.Y. indie performance art community, inspiring and mobilizing with her incisive and audacious projects."
--Sook-Yin Lee, director of Paying For It

"A finely decorated glimpse into an advertising agency somehow floating outside of time. Stewart de Peña builds a dense, soft carpeted world of corridors that only an insider could give us, where the ad copy is so perspicuous it's educational. Despite its shadows (or because of them?), I would like to work at Julius Julius."
--Donovan Woods, singer-songwriter

"Julius Julius takes place at an advertising agency with a richly imagined, 2000-year history, housed in a labyrinthine building full of hidden wonders and lost souls. The novel is like that building: both unnerving and delightful, and made up of exquisite details. Aurora Stewart de Peña's debut is surreal in the way of a lucid dream, where anything could happen but everything makes sense. Throughout it all, the reader is warmly accompanied by Stewart de Peña's clear, congenial voice: Julius Julius is unsetting, sometimes terrifying, but shot through with humor and joy.

An award-winning playwright and advertising strategist, Stewart de Peña's one-of-a-kind sensibility, and devotion to craftsmanship, shines in everything she touches. She understands the art of creating ads, and the often amoral world of advertising--subjects that become captivating with her storytelling. Her understated absurdism recalls Flann O'Brien and Sarah Moss, while her imaginative rigor brings to mind Catherine Lacey, with Nicholson Baker's eye for small details that illuminate everything--she can derive a human epic from a tuna can.

Stewart de Peña is endlessly attentive to secret histories: the human drama that goes into creating a brand, or the human cost of erecting the buildings where our daily lives take place. A wholly original work of magic realism, Julius Julius immerses us in a strange and wonderful reality, while tuning our perception of the reality we know. Julius Julius is one of those rare novels that enlarges your attention in subtle, but indelible ways: the world seems bigger since I read it."
--Alexandra Molotkow

"Julius Julius is a satirical novel in three parts about an ad agency with ancient origins, where ghosts and dachshunds roam its cavernous halls. While often written with a dark or bittersweet sense of humor, it also contains unflinching reflections on serious cultural, capitalistic, and corporate realities. Strange, quick, and powerful."
--Staff Pick, Parnassus Books

"This delightful debut introduces Julius Julius, the 2000-year-old advertising agency responsible for popularizing handwashing, immortalizing biscotti, and imbuing Sam from iCarly with the characteristics of a lemon lime soda. In three concise parts, we're acquainted with the company's illustrious reputation, its questionable (but quirky) history, and the labyrinth of underground caves that houses its archives, accessible only by hand-cranked elevator. We also meet the several generations of dachshunds, actual ghosts, and protected variety of white millipede that comprise the company ecosystem. Consistently hilarious and at times, moving, this book is perfect for fans of Hilary Leichter and Halle Butler."
--Staff Pick, Politics and Prose Books

"A love song to advertising's joyful promise and a warning against its insidious lies, this not-quite fever dream of a multivoiced novel transports us to a place that is real and unreal, just like the best advertising does. What price the dream of lumber, elevators, and the world's oldest, most prestigious ad agency? Between the ghosts of mad men past, the faithful endurance of small sausage dogs, and the self-possession to see clearly through the fog of success, the halls of Julius Julius, wherever they are, encompass the world. This book is a quiet, brilliantly set jewel."
--Staff Pick, Carmichael Books

"Julius Julius is my hidden gem of the year. Written by a former worker in the advertising industry, this novel pokes fun at the inherent silliness of ads while also highlighting the profound ways they speak to our base needs and desires. It's also a book full of whimsy, with dachshunds roaming the ad agency, an archive held in the cave systems below the building, and the ghosts of former employees that stalk the halls."
--Staff Pick, Boulder Books

"Fresh and Hilarious."
--JC Grenn (@JCGrenn Reads)

"Filled with absurd and fascinating insights, and many, many dogs."
--Arizona O'Neill (@ONeillreads)

"I just loved this book. Bottom line."
--@Readandbookmarked

"Julius Julius. Weird. But the good kind of weird. Think absurdist theatre meets suburban malaise, wrapped in a crusty loaf of surrealism. The narrative is sharp, like a scalpel slicing through middle-class ennui with pitch-black humor. Just the right amount of dread. It reads like if David Lynch directed an episode of Mad Men.
"What really stands out to me is Stewart de Peña's voice. It's distinct. It's theatrical, literary, and cinematic all at once. The pacing could throw some readers off: some parts feel intentionally stagnant but that feels like the point. It lingers. It festers.
"Overall, this was one of the funnest reads I've come across in a while. A strange, theatrical fever dream that will stick with you longer than expected. Would recommend!"
--@booksncrooks

About the Author

AURORA STEWART DE PEÑA is a writer based in Toronto. Aurora's essays have appeared in Vice, Canadian Art, Real Life Magazine, and  the Globe and Mail, and her fiction and poetry have appeared in The Ex-Puritan, Little Brother Magazine, and Petal Journal. Aurora's plays have been produced in Toronto at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, the Harbourfront Centre, Summerworks, and the Factory Theatre, with others in New York, England, and Italy. She's worked for some of the country's most recognizable and awarded agencies, including Bensimon Byrne, Taxi, and Zulu Alpha Kilo. Recognized nationally and globally for her work, Aurora has won Clio, One Show, and D & AD awards among others.