Great Expectations: A Novel

The author of Empire of the Senseless gives the Dickens classic a punk twist, setting it in 1980s New York City.

Kathy Acker's practice of literary appropriation and pastiche made her notorious—as a rebel and a groundbreaker—when Great Expectations was first published in 1982. Here, she begins rewriting Charles Dickens's classic—splicing it with passages from Pierre Guyotat's sexually violent Eden, Eden, Eden, among other texts—alongside Acker's trademark pithy dialogue, as well as prank mi...