Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story is a love story conducted inside a society that has converted almost everything else into data.

In a near-future America of collapsing public institutions, permanent connectivity, consumer debt and compulsive self-measurement, middle-aged Lenny Abramov falls for Eunice Park, a much younger woman whose social world is almost entirely mediated through screens. Their relationship unfolds through alternating diary entries and digital messages, giving the novel two radically different languages for intimacy.

Published in 2010, it now has the slightly unnerving quality of satire whose exaggerations have been steadily eaten by reality. Shteyngart imagines people publicly ranked for desirability and creditworthiness, devices that constantly broadcast personal information, language compressed into platform vernacular, and political life dissolving into entertainment and commerce. But underneath the very funny dystopian machinery is a fairly mournful novel about ageing, mortality and the embarrassing persistence of wanting another person when the culture around you has learned to quantify everything except why that matters.

Edition & condition: Granta Books, London, 2010. Paperback. Light shelf wear; clean and sound overall. Very good condition.