Black Bag - by Luke Kennard (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An out-of-work actor accepts the role of a lifetime--sitting soundlessly in a lecture theater, zipped into a large leather bag--to aid a professor's psychological experiment. What could possibly go wrong?

In Luke Kennard's audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr. Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr. Blend's students react to someone zipped into an oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of Fall lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own--in particular, can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag?--and the actor's childhood friend forms a vision for monetizing this new situation . . .

A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity, and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.

Review Quotes

"[A] delightful and dark picaresque . . . Kennard entertainingly pokes and prods at conceptions of identity, whether in sexual relationships or online personae. It's a hoot." --Publishers Weekly

"A genre-defying, big-swing of a novel with a Kafkaesque premise so absurd it shouldn't work--and yet in Luke Kennard's hands, it sings. I did not anticipate that a broke actor zipping himself into a leather bag for a bizarre university experiment would lead to such a sharply funny meditation on masculinity, academia, the modern attention economy, and the quiet desperation of everyday life--but I sure as hell am glad it did. This novel is bold, completely original, and unforgettable." --Andrew Boryga, author of Victim

"This book walks and talks like a comedic masterpiece. Part SNL sketch, part Spike Jonze film, Black Bag punks everyone and everything, taking aim at high tech, higher ed, and modern-day masculinity along the way. It's also just plain hot . . . The smart and sexy look this season? Black Bag." --Ben Purkert, author of The Men Can't Be Saved

"What's most extraordinary about Black Bag isn't just its wry discursions to the psychology classroom, the sex dungeon, or the Swedish sawmill of the mind--though these are rendered with such phosphorescent wit that I could've read a book's worth of each. In Black Bag, we're treated to an uncommonly funny and deeply necessary snapshot of masculinity no more objectionable nor perfect than a black leather bag. Whoever thinks men aren't writing fiction clearly needs to read Luke Kennard." --Rafael Frumkin, author of Confidence

"A wryly subversive glimpse into the inner life of an actor who barely perceives how truly lost he is. It's clever, moving, biting, rich with integrity, and wildly funny." --Sierra Greer, award-winning author of Annie Bot

"How much can you fit in a large leather satchel? Luke Kennard suggests, when said bag is zipped up around the body of an out-of-work actor trying to find his way, the answer is near infinite: humor, dear friendship, frustrated desire, a talking dog, a wad of cash, hallucinogens, ambition, AI, humility, and no shortage of heart. Black Bag carried me along with a tremendously deft hand: it had me laughing, unnerved, and hopeful as it galloped through a true and strange world. This book left me reckoning with what to make of the society outside my proverbial eye slits, and what, with some effort, we might make of it still." --Emily Nemens, bestselling author of The Cactus League

"A stylish, fun, and surprisingly incisive examination of masculinity, modernity, and attempting to make a living as a creative. It's also a weird little book about and, presumably for, sickos. Reading it hits like a concussion that makes you stranger but more compassionate. Easily the sharpest, funniest thing I've read all year." --Calvin Kasulke, author of Several People Are Typing

"Equal parts charming and unhinged, Black Bag is the perfect novel for anyone who has ever felt like 'someone is constantly slapping me in the stomach with an old brown shoe.' This is one of hundreds (thousands?) of quotable lines from an immensely talented writer to watch. Luke Kennard, I will follow you anywhere." --Ruth Madievsky, bestselling and award-winning author of All Night Pharmacy

About the Author

Luke Kennard is an award-winning poet and novelist. In 2014 he was named one of the Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Book Society in their once-per-decade list. His collection, Cain, was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and described by Alan Hollinghurst as "the cleverest and funniest thing I've read this year," and Notes on the Sonnets won the Forward prize for Best Poetry Collection in 2021. The Transition, his first novel, was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. The Book of Jonah, his new poetry collection, will be published by Picador in 2025. Luke Kennard lives in Birmingham, UK, where he teaches Creative Writing at Birmingham University.