IN HER 2019 NOBEL LECTURE OLGA TOKARCZUK SAID THE FOLLOWING:
“We live in a reality of polyphonic first-person narratives, and we are met from all sides with polyphonic noise. What I mean by first-person is the kind of tale that narrowly orbits the self of a teller who more or less directly just writes about herself and through herself. We have determined that this type of individualized point of view, this voice from the self, is the most natural, human and honest, even if it does abstain from a broader perspective . . . Narratives of the “I’m going to tell you my story” variety, or “I’m going to tell you the story of my family,” or even simply, “I’m going to tell you where I’ve been,” comprise today’s most popular literary genre . . . akin to a choir made up of soloists only . . . The general commercialization of the literary market has led to a division into branches . . . this or that type of literature, completely separate, creating a clientele of readers eager to hole up with a crime novel, some fantasy or science fiction. A notable characteristic of this situation is that what was only supposed to help booksellers and librarians organize on their shelves the massive quantity of published books . . . became instead abstract categories not only into which existing works are placed, but also according to which writers themselves have started writing. Increasingly, genre work is like a kind of cake mold that produces very similar results, their predictability considered a virtue, their banality an achievement. The reader knows what to expect and gets exactly what he wanted.”
The visionary Indian writer Amitav Ghosh observes that the “modern novel” has failed us by limiting its scope to, as John Updike put it, the “individual moral adventure,” thus “banish[ing] the collective from the territory of the fictional imagination.” This is, he argues, the reason that contemporary literature has failed to illuminate some of the world’s most urgent problems, including climate change.
Vector Books does not seek to add to the polyphonic noise of memoirs and identity novels, nor does it seek books aligned with the expectations or a genre or a niche.
Instead, we seek to be a contrarian force, a home for books that are out of fashion with mainstream agents and publishers. We seek books that defy the niches that have come to dominate the literary marketplace and that encourage readers to put aside their obsession with self and tribe and explore our shared cultural and political challenges from different perspectives. In one way or another, our books intermediate or illuminate our collective experience of wobbly transition to a globalized, technological, sustainable, post-tribal, impious world.