Ellenberg’s offbeat premise gives rise to plenty of witty and absurd situations that recall masters like Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut…Campus novels often tend toward the parochial or the arcane, but Ellenberg breathes fresh air into the genre.”—Publisher’s Weekly
“It is Ellenberg’s keen sense of humor and propensity for drawing out the absurdity in collegiate obsessions that takes center stage in this very strange and over-the-top but amusing novel.” —Booklist
“Slate.com journalist Ellenberg, a well-known Princeton mathematician, debuts with this tale of a deranged scholar out west who devotes his life to the study of the worst poet in history…Nicely done and genuinely funny.” —Kirkus Reviews
“The Grasshopper King is a traditional comic academic novel, complete with deranged deans and crass coaches and desperate professors trapped in the hinterlands…Light, amusing, and carefully crafted as it is, The Grasshopper King is a cautionary tale about the perils of precision.” —The Washington Post Book World
“…a delightful little novel…” —American Book Review
“A zany send-up of campus life.” —The New York Sun
“The Grasshopper King is a breezy discovery for readers…In this madcap novel, the grasshopper-like characters croak, leap, and butt heads—ostensibly over academic fortune, but really in an effort to understand the meaning of love.” —The Boston Phoenix
“[T]he Grasshopper King is engaging. Sam’s self-deprecating narration is witty and satisfyingly melancholic, Ellenberg’s characters genuinely likeable, and there is an undercurrent of conspiracies and machinations that keeps the narrative moving.”
—Baltimore City Paper
“Ultimately, it seems everyone is touched by this poet, or the professor, or the language becomes miserable and mad…and in turn, more honest in describing how woefully funny the world truly is.” —Minneapolis City Pages
“The funniest campus novel in ages, and a slippery, serious-minded investigation of what happens when good languages go bad.” —Rain Taxi Review of Books
“Following in the tradition of Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim and Richard Russo’s Straight Man, Jordan Ellenberg’s The Grasshopper King tells the story of Sam Grapearbor, a sullen ambitious grad student, and Higgs, a professor obsessed with an obscure European poet…Ellenberg really shines when he scrutinizes, with hilarious insight, and the relationship between Grapearbor and the relationship between his girlfriend Julia…It’s here, in the imperfect romantic sphere, that Ellenberg shows off his terrific, formidable humor.” —Rockland Journal News
“Like reading Murakami, readers will find themselves in a world that is so absurd, yet so palpable. Writing with wit and cleverness, Ellenberg moves deftly among moments of poignancy, satire, and slapstick comedy to make The Grasshopper King an entertaining and worthwhile read.” —Manitou Messenger
"The funniest send-up of academia since Jane Smiley’s Moo.” —ForeWord magazine
“Zany campus satire about a university with a lame basketball program whose only residual claim to fame is its Gravinics Department, dedicated to the study of an obscure European country’s only notable export—the possibly world-saving poet, Henderson. Speedy, smart, and winsome meditations on immortality and obscurity.” —The Believer
“The Grasshopper King is clever without pretentiousness, filled with enduring absurdity, bittersweet feelings and quirky characters.” —Ripsaw News
“The Grasshopper King is a quirky story which is warmly appealing in a rich tapestry of unfolding hidden secrets…very highly recommended reading and a novel which clearly documents Jordan Ellenberg as an author to keep track of!”
—Library Bookwatch
“The Grasshopper King is an exceptionally silly book. It’s also quite brilliant. These two things might sound mutually exclusive but, in mathematics professor and genius Jordan Ellenberg’s hands, they’re simply delightful.” —January Magazine
“Nicely presented, by turns wistful and amusing, realistic and absurd, The Grasshopper King is full of small delights. An enjoyable, never predictable romp which doesn’t quite settle for merely going for laughs but actually manages considerably more.” —Complete Review
“From Coffee House Press comes The Grasshopper King, Slate columnist Jordan Ellenberg’s wryly funny Boyle-cun-Borges satire about a crabby, untalented, yet mysteriously important Kafka-like poet and the two academics who wreck their lives by trying to explain him. We laughed more than a few times, and crown King as the best thing we’ve read all month.” —The Rake
“Very funny, laugh-out-loud funny at times, and yet still had a very serious point to make as well as an interesting, complex storyline. I love fictional poets, and fictional Eastern European countries, so a fictional Eastern European poet, especially a hilariously grumpy, hostile, and untalented one, was just my cup of tea.”
—Caleb Wilson, Davis-Kidd Booksellers
“A brilliant debut: Jordan Ellenberg’s The Grasshopper King is perhaps the funniest and best-written ‘college’ novel I’ve read since Pale Fire—with a considerably more appealing cast of characters than Nabokov’s.” —John Barth
“Jordan Ellenberg’s one of the funniest, flashiest, zaniest, cleverest and also one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable new young writers around. His first novel, The Grasshopper King, sometimes seems to have been written by the Marx Brothers; other times it’s just strong, sharp satire and a good story. If it brings half the laughs and enjoyment to the reader as it did to me, it’ll be pure pleasure.” —Stephen Dixon
First novelist and former math whiz kid Jordan Ellenberg uses a form that is not new, but he has fun with a fresh and original premise and a narrator whom we like although we may not believe everything he tells us. — Kit Reed
Slate.com journalist Ellenberg, a well-known Princeton mathematician, debuts with this tale of a deranged scholar out west who devotes his life to the study of the worst poet in history. We're introduced to the woebegone campus of Chandler State University, founded in 1871 on the site of the gold mine where prospector Tip Chandler struck it rich. The mine played out decades ago, but the college remains: an island of intellectual mediocrity in a ghost town in the middle of the desert. Chandler is famous for only one thing: its world-renowned Department of Gravinics, dedicated to the study of a Monaco-sized country in the Carpathian Mountains that was swallowed up in the 1920s by the Soviet Union. Gravine's most famous poet was an English expatriate named Henderson, and the world's foremost Henderson scholar is Chandler's own Stanley Higgs, a Chandler alum who discovered a stash of Henderson's poetry in Berlin and returned to Chandler to codify the manuscripts. The fact that Henderson's poetry is considered unreadable by just about everyone makes his discovery only more of an event, and soon Higgs has become a star in his own right, attracting students from both coasts and abroad. But, like many an academic superstar, Higgs has his personality quirks, the most notable being his refusal to speak. At first he's merely taciturn, but eventually he gives up on talking altogether-with disastrous results for his lectures, of course, and for the university, which is desperate to regain the services of its most prized teacher. A surveillance squad is assigned to monitor Higgs around the clock for signs of vocal return. Meanwhile, Higgs's dogged research into the whereabouts of Henderson (who maystill be alive) begins to bear fruit. Will Henderson himself speak again before Higgs does? And, more to the point, will either one have anything worthwhile to say? Nicely done and genuinely funny though overlong: a satire that would benefit from Polonius's famous dictum: "Brevity is the soul of wit."
