
The Delivery
A Novel
Peter Mendelsund(Author)
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc (Publisher)
Published on 9. February 2021
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-0-374-60042-6 (ISBN)
Description
Countries go wrong sometimes, and sometimes the luckier citizens of those countries have a chance to escape and seek refuge in another country-a country that might itself be in the process of going wrong.
In the bustling indifference of an unnamed city, one such citizen finds himself trapped working for a company that makes its money dispatching an army of undocumented refugees to bring the well-off men and women of this confounding metropolis their dinners. Whatever he might have been at home, this citizen is now a Delivery Boy: a member of a new and invisible working class, pedaling his power-assist bike through traffic, hoping for a decent tip and a five-star rating.
He is decidedly a Delivery Boy; sometimes he even feels like a Delivery Baby; certainly he's not yet a Delivery Man, though he'll have to "man up" if he wants to impress N.-the aloof dispatcher who sends him his orders and helps him with his English.
Can our hero avoid the wrath of his Supervisor, get the girl, and escape his indentured servitude? Can someone in his predicament ever have a happy ending? Who gets to decide? And who's telling this story, anyway?
Harrowing and hilarious, Peter Mendelsund's The Delivery is a fable for and about our times: an exploration of the ways language and commerce unite and isolate every one of us, both native and immigrant.
In the bustling indifference of an unnamed city, one such citizen finds himself trapped working for a company that makes its money dispatching an army of undocumented refugees to bring the well-off men and women of this confounding metropolis their dinners. Whatever he might have been at home, this citizen is now a Delivery Boy: a member of a new and invisible working class, pedaling his power-assist bike through traffic, hoping for a decent tip and a five-star rating.
He is decidedly a Delivery Boy; sometimes he even feels like a Delivery Baby; certainly he's not yet a Delivery Man, though he'll have to "man up" if he wants to impress N.-the aloof dispatcher who sends him his orders and helps him with his English.
Can our hero avoid the wrath of his Supervisor, get the girl, and escape his indentured servitude? Can someone in his predicament ever have a happy ending? Who gets to decide? And who's telling this story, anyway?
Harrowing and hilarious, Peter Mendelsund's The Delivery is a fable for and about our times: an exploration of the ways language and commerce unite and isolate every one of us, both native and immigrant.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 133 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
347 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-374-60042-6 (9780374600426)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
02/2021
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
€12.49
Available for download
Person
Peter Mendelsund is a novelist and graphic designer. He is the former associate art director of Alfred A. Knopf, where his work was described by The Wall Street Journal as "the most instantly recognizable and iconic in contemporary fiction." Mendelsund is the author of three books about design: What We See When We Read, Cover, and The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature. His debut novel, Same, Same, was published in 2019.