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Listen to Hari Kunzru's Gods Without Men Mixtape

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A kaleidoscopic novel that shifts between a modern-day couple’s struggle to come to terms with their son’s inexplicable disappearance in the Mojave Desert and the epiphanies of the restless spirits who ventured there before them, Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru delivers an acute portrait of contemporary American life as it illuminates the timeless human desire to comprehend life’s mysteries.

The world of Gods Without Men is an absorbing one—Kunzru’s Mojave is a strange, extraordinary place. One of the book’s most revealing epigraphs (which we’ve translated from the French) comes from Honoré de Balzac, “In the desert, you see, there is everything and nothing…It is God without men.” Immerse yourself in the setting with the help of Kunzru’s own Gods Without Men mixtape, songs that “informed, inspired, or were just on heavy rotation” while he wrote the book. Click here to read his explanations of each track, and click here for a Spotify playlist of the songs.