The Sense of Wonder

From the author of PEN/Faulkner finalist Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear and Craft in the Real World comes a searing masterwork on the ways Asian Americans navigate the thorny worlds of sports and entertainment when everything is stacked against them.

• "A brilliant and scathing chronicle of two Asian Americans as they try to find their place in contemporary sports and media...Salesses fills the page with all the bold, kinetic confidence of an athlete striding onto the court."
  Publishers Weekly (starred review)
• "A remarkable novel of love, obstacles, and possibilities...The Sense of Wonder explores multiple Korean American experiences through vivid, unforgettable characters. [Readers] will love the depth of the characters' perspectives on being people of color in a white-dominated society."
  Booklist
• "[Salesses's] storytelling is crisp while avoiding easy frothiness. A smart, very meta take on love, sports, race, and media."
  Kirkus Reviews
• “What a pleasure to read work that spits off the page, fiction that vibrates and twitches with life. The Sense of Wonder is exactly that kind of book, one that refuses to let you forget about it, a novel that wants you to remember its story long after the initial read is done. This is a wildly physical book, the beating heart of it smashed up against the ribcage of the binding, thumping hard, demanding attention. I have never read anything like it. Matthew Salesses is a genius and The Sense of Wonder is a genuine marvel.”
  Kristen Arnett, bestselling author of With Teeth and Mostly Dead Things
• “Matthew Salesses's new novel is so freaking good I can't stand it. Blistering, confident, full of swagger and heart, it is also an exhilaratingly smart treatise on race and our collective imagination that lays bare our limitations before blasting joyfully past them. A must read!”
  Catherine Chung, author of The Tenth Muse and Forgotten Country
• "Sharp, funny, and searingly original, The Sense of Wonder is a tour de force from one of the most inventive writers working today."
  Kirstin Chen, author of Counterfeit
• "When Won is signed by the New York Knicks, it seems at first that his dreams are coming true, but instead he is drawn into a world rife with high-stakes rivalry, subterfuge, and corrosive racism. The Sense of Wonder is equal parts a love letter to the intricate art form of basketball; a blade-sharp page-turner that delves deep into the rotten heart of America; and an ode to kdrama and the liberating power of love. Matthew Salesses brilliantly upends expectations on every page and, by the end, a powerfully new kind of story surfaces. The Sense of Wonder  is revelatory and original and I absolutely loved this novel."
  Laura van den Berg, author of I Hold a Wolf by the Ears