Flat Earth - by Anika Jade Levy (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A young woman struggles with the artistic success of her more privileged, beautiful best friend in this ruthless portrait of the New York art scene in which relationships are transactional, men are vampiric, and women have limited time to trade on their youth, beauty, and talent--it's Renata Adler's Speedboat for the Adderall generation

"I read this book in a night, breathless and enraptured; wanting to save everyone in it, and wanting to watch them burn forever." --Leslie Jamison

Avery is a grad student in New York working on a collection of cultural reports and flailing financially and emotionally. She dates older men for money, and others for the oblivion their egos offer. In an act of desperation, Avery takes a job at a right-wing dating app. The "white-paper" she is tasked to write for the startup eventually merges with her dissertation, resulting in a metafictional text that reveals itself over the course of the novel.

Meanwhile, her best friend, Frances, an effortlessly chic emerging filmmaker from a wealthy Southern family, drops out of grad school, gets married, and somehow still manages to finish her first feature documentary. Frances's triumphant return to New York as the toast of the art world sends Avery into a final tailspin, pushing her to make a series of devastating decisions.

In this generational portrait, attention spans are at an all-time low and dopamine tolerance is at an all-time high. Flat Earth is a story of coming of age in America, a novel about commodification, conspiracy theories, mimetic desire, and the difficulties of female friendship that's as sharp and sardonic as it is heartbreaking.

Review Quotes

5 Under 35 Honoree
Finalist for the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize
GQ, A Best Book of 2025
W Magazine, A Fall Must-Read
Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
Library Journal, A Title to Watch

"Witty and poignant . . . Funny and sharp . . . The book effectively portrays the psychology of young women who are chronically online . . . There is a layer of sadness under the flat surface, not quite accessible. This tension is ultimately where the novel succeeds in being beautiful. Levy is good at keeping the feeling out of reach." --Erin Somers, The New York Times Book Review

"A generational portrait that actually says something new." --The Atlantic

"Dazzling debut fiction . . . I adored this captivating coming-of-age novel about friendship and femininity . . . The narrative moves forwards in sharp fragments that pierce with their ­intensity. It's cool, clever and current. I predict a smash hit." --Sara Lawrence, The Daily Mail

"[A] slim and sharp debut . . . The bigger picture--late-stage capitalism segueing into techno-feudalism, eco-pessimism, a moral arc of the universe that seems to bend not towards justice but away from it--is bleakly relevant to all of us . . . Somewhere in all the irony we might find a glimmer of hope: the hint from Levy that there might be other ways to see the world." --Gabrielle Schwarz, The Guardian

"Anika Jade Levy's Flat Earth exudes ennui and sadness, each chapter prefaced by a mordant precis of bizarre fads and news stories to set against its heroine's apathy and dysfunction . . . There is a glum kind of humour woven into the despair, and the hopelessness is rendered strangely hypnotic in crisp, pitiless prose." --Suzi Feay, Financial Times

"This novel will soon be in the hands of cool girls everywhere . . . [A] glittering satirical tale . . . That 'real America, ' as it happens, is the best bit of this book, described by Levy with dense and gorgeously spiky prose. Rodeos, purity balls, Instagram romance coaches, synthetic opioids, Hyatt hotels, egg-freezing ads, conspiracy theories, Confederate flag bikinis, a Californian town called East Jesus, '9/11-themed slot machines' where 'airplanes crashed into the twin towers and exploded every time you hit a triple'--it's all jammed in there . . . Flat Earth is a deliciously accurate description of how life looks at 26-and-a-half . . . The novel is light on plot and heavy on vibes, but fortunately those vibes are meaty, juicy and tantalizingly zeitgeisty." --Ceci Browning, The Sunday Times (London)

"Charged with a gleeful apocalyptic energy . . . Flat Earth wittily articulates the dilemmas of affluent young American women raised on smartphones and taught that seeming to be happy and successful is far more important that what's actually going on . . . Levy's book is a briskly enjoyable generational snapshot." --Paul Whitington, The Irish Examiner

"While it's likely enough that you've encountered tales of rivalries between best friends or biting portraits of coastal arts scenes, you've surely never read anything quite like Anika Jade Levy's new novel Flat Earth . . . Levy more than pulls it off, crafting a tale of grad-school metafiction antics, right-wing romantic intrigue, sugaring and quasi-sororal betrayal that's almost impossible to put down." --Emma Specter, Vogue

"Fans of Sarah Rose Etter and Elizabeth Wurtzel will find familiarity in Levy's unfussy prose, though her most beautiful sentences usher in diagnoses of a dead-eyed generation, the brains of which have been ravaged by the stupidest corners of the internet . . . Easily one of my favorite debuts of the year." --Emily Leibert, The Cut

"Energetic and episodic . . . Dazzlingly deadpan and sharp observations about navigating the strange world of now . . . Flat Earth is a delight." --Jasmine Vojdani, Vulture

"Levy's work . . . has a strong sense of dark, ironic humor that recalls midcentury literature." --Drew Gillis, The A.V. Club

"Not to be missed if you want to keep up with the literary zeitgeist." --GQ

"When Levy is allowed to render her own consciousness--when she permits herself to render her own consciousness--with honesty, her writing is singular, and therefore exceptional." --Ann Manov, The Baffler

"As a social satire, the novel is written to provoke. It does so deliciously . . . [Levy's] prose is cold and crystal clear. Her voice casts a spell, as consistent as it is authentic. I found Flat Earth more seductive than my phone." --Tierney Finster, Los Angeles Review of Books

"An enthralling depiction of the persistent and absurd dissonance of contemporary life . . . Every character has been meticulously, lovingly rendered offputting, every detail deliberately handpicked to maximize the sense of disarray that characterizes modern life. This debut novel is brimming with strange and cynical insights into conspiracy, belief, art, class tensions, the Internet, and cool girls." --Anson Tong, Chicago Review of Books

"Levy debuts with a darkly funny work of hyperrealism . . . Pitch-perfect humor . . . The novel never loses the fierceness of its gaze. It's an astute and audacious satire." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Brilliant . . . In Avery's narrative voice, Levy has achieved a fantastic yet paradoxical triumph: It's a voice that manages to carry intimations as acerbic as they are full of longing, as strident as they are vulnerable, and as tart as they are unguarded . . . With her own hyperarticulate, stimulant-driven style, Avery (and Levy behind her) runs into her own life, helter-skelter, as if it were a door she'd forgotten to open. You'll want to keep reading just to see what she says next. Levy's utterly original sendup of contemporary life seems destined to become a cult classic." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"One of the best novels I've read this year . . . What happens in Flat Earth is perfectly interesting, but it's the voice that makes the whole thing soar . . . This debut is so assured, so tightly written, so effortlessly paced and mordantly funny--the haze of hopelessness shrouds everything--that any doubts that one might have about this generation's talent is somewhat erased . . . Like Didion, every word resonates, screwed tightly into place . . . It's the real deal, I mean a real novel with something for us to say about where are now." --Bret Easton Ellis

"If you're going to stand out with a novel about competitive female friendship and coming-of-age in New York City, you better be an assassin with the sentences, and Anika totally is. She really has an excellent brain and is a stylish, funny, sharp writer." --Cat Marnell

"This debut is so assured, so tightly written, so effortlessly paced and mordantly funny. Like Didion, every word resonates. One of the best novels I've read this year." --Bret Easton Ellis, author of The Shards

"Anika Jade Levy's mordantly brilliant debut is by turns a searching portrait of friendship, a blazing social satire, an intelligence briefing from the Ministry of New Things, and perhaps finally an antiheroine's quest to lose, or at least complicate, her prefix. We all must read to the edge of Flat Earth, even at the risk of a grievous plummet." --Sam Lipsyte, New York Times bestselling author of The Ask, Venus Drive, and No One Left to Come Looking for You

"Reading Flat Earth feels like opening your best friend's diary and finding out what she really thinks about you, and then falling even more in love with her--realizing that love is something darker and more consuming than you'd let yourself believe. Flat Earth is fierce, hungry, hurting, on fire. The prose in this book makes other books feel like dull knives. This is a book about friendship and imperfect care--about the ways we love not despite but through our brokenness, because it's what we have. I read this book in a night, breathless and enraptured--wanting to save everyone in it, and wanting to watch them burn forever." --Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters and The Empathy Exams

"If Mary Gaitskill and Renata Adler spent a weekend collaborating on a sequel to Elizabeth Hardwick's Sleepless Nights, maybe you'd have some precedent for Flat Earth. Anika Jade Levy's razor-thin, razor-sharp debut novel is unlike anything I've ever read before. In fragments that blaze like iPhone faces in dark bedrooms at 3:00 a.m., Flat Earth captures a zeitgeist from its daily ephemera to its unhinged gestalt, transmuting the mess into a brilliant, visceral, funny, provocative, resonant, essential work of art." --Justin Taylor, author of Reboot

About the Author

ANIKA JADE LEVY is a writer from Colorado. She is a founding editor of Forever Magazine, an instructor in the Writing program at Columbia University, and a contributor at Playboy. Flat Earth is her debut.