The Book of Losman
Coming October 1, 2024
Meet Daniel Losman—an American in Copenhagen, translating books and living a solitary existence. His longtime girlfriend has left him, and the only highlights in his life are encounters with an offbeat artist he thinks he’s in love with and weekends with his three-year-old son, whom he worries has inherited his Tourette Syndrome.
When Losman learns of a new drug designed to locate the root of his Tourette through childhood memories, he’s lured by promises of a cure and visits the mysterious lab that developed the drug. Initially, what he discovers buried deep within his brain rejuvenates him. But the more Losman takes the drug, the more he needs it. Losman steals some of the pills and locks himself away in his apartment, only to quickly find himself trapped inside his own mind. There’s a way out of his head, but it will come at a price…
With intelligence and humor reminiscent of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, The Book of Losman explores the depths one man will go to make himself whole.
PRAISE
“K.E. Semmel has written a fine and funny novel. Are we merely the sum of our experiences—or is there something deeper, something ineffable? Losman, through considerable trail, and even more error, is about to find out.”
—Owen King, author of The Curator
“Start to finish, K.E. Semmel’s debut novel is a true joy. Daniel P. Losman—a man full of fear, anxiety, happiness, and confusion—is a remarkable creation. His existential crisis, so masterfully depicted, made me want to both laugh and cry. Although I could hardly wait to learn what happens next, a fresh image or turn of phrase caught my eye on every page. The Book of Losman is a novel to linger over, to savor, to read aloud, to reread.”
—Andrew Ervin, author of Burning Down George Orwell’s House
“A lonely American translator in Copenhagen, his persistent struggles with Tourette Syndrome, the artist neighbor he has a crush on, and the young son he is devoted to. This is The Book of Losman: imaginative, riveting, moving, occasionally absurd, and always thought-provoking. This slim novel asks how far we’ll go to cure what ails us, and explores how badly we want the past to solve the present. Semmel is an elegant writer, and this is an assured, remarkable debut.”
—Edan Lepucki, author of Time’s Mouth
“K.E. Semmel’s The Book of Losman asks important questions about memory, identity, and the things we choose from our personal histories to both passively and actively build our fractured selves. It is also riotously funny. Losman is the new literary everyman I didn’t know I needed.”
—Rion Amilcar Scott, author of The World Doesn’t Require You
“K.E. Semmel’s debut novel brilliantly captures the daily anxieties and mortification of being a human in the world. With warmth, wit, and remarkable perception, The Book of Losman reveals the lengths we’re willing to go to spare our progeny from inheriting our deepest pains.”
—Ravi Mangla, author of The Observant
“The death of an elderly neighbor kicks off this wild literary ride, in which Semmel deftly relates the story of Losman, a translator with Tourette who struggles to get to the source of his tics. Readers will be drawn right into Losman’s risky endeavor, which also involves a scientist from a mysterious lab who offers him a seemingly promising solution. The life of a literary translator has never looked so daring!”
—Mark Mussari, translator, The First Stone by Carsten Jensen
“Daniel Losman has Tourette Syndrome and is willing to take an experimental drug to mine his babyhood memories, in the hopes of finding a cure. What he finds, instead, is that the answer he seeks isn’t found in memory’s depths but in a terrifying rebirth he must experience to free himself from the past. Filled with humor, horror, and empathy, The Book of Losman is a stunning debut.”
—Stephen G. Eoannou, author of Yesteryear
“Losman is a translator and a misfit, which is to say: a keen observer of the society he’s cut off from. In this tender, compelling novel, by turns comic and—in one particularly memorable scene—terrifying, Semmel nails what it’s like to be an expat in Denmark.”
—Misha Hoekstra, Booker Prize-shortlisted translator of Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors