'An electrifying collection of stories from the febrile imagination of a young writer who traverses culture, genre and form.
'A man grows tired of his open-plan office and builds a fort made of stationery. A woman's euphoria at finally achieving Desktop Zero is quickly replaced with despair. A group of copywriters dream of being poets, and a disillusioned sales executive overthinks his think piece.
'In the mind-bendingly upside-down world of Sadvertising, iPhones have feelings, brands come to life, creative directors disappear into parallel universes and lowly freelancers become immortal. It's a world where gods, ghosts and muses stalk the corridors of bland and placeless offices, and the wondrous exists alongside the mundane.
'Short, punchy and direct, Ennis Cehic's satirical fables are box-fresh and shot through with pitch-black humour, existential dread and late capitalist yearning for meaning. They grapple with love and loneliness, art and commerce, dream and reality, and reflect the absurdity of the modern condition.
'Sadvertising is a surreal, subversive and utterly contemporary literary debut from an unforgettable new voice.' (Publication summary)
'A surreal and satirical collection of short stories set in and around the world of advertising.'
'In July 2021, the American billionaire Jeff Bezos completed the first private flight to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere and back in a spacecraft unapologetically resembling a giant penis. New Shepard, as it was called, carried Amazon’s owner, his brother Mark (Jeff’s spitting image), an 82-year-old ex-pilot, and a young Dutchman whose enthusiasm for the 8-minute space trip cost him $28 million. In the press conference after the landing, a grinning Bezos thanked all the Amazon customers around the world, saying, ‘you guys paid for this’. The audience indulged the good humour of one of the wealthiest men on the planet. Haha! None taken!' (Introduction)
'The Burnished Sun by Mirandi Riwoe, Danged Black Thing by Eugen Bacon, and Sadvertising by Ennis Ćehić are powerful, inventive, and self-assured short story collections that traverse fractured and contested ground through their often displaced and alienated narrators.' (Introduction)
'Ennis Ćehić has done something remarkable – in a book of 50 stories, only one of them reads like filler. Sadvertising feels complete, well rounded and carefully planned and structured.' (Introduction)
'Ennis Ćehić has done something remarkable – in a book of 50 stories, only one of them reads like filler. Sadvertising feels complete, well rounded and carefully planned and structured.' (Introduction)
'The Burnished Sun by Mirandi Riwoe, Danged Black Thing by Eugen Bacon, and Sadvertising by Ennis Ćehić are powerful, inventive, and self-assured short story collections that traverse fractured and contested ground through their often displaced and alienated narrators.' (Introduction)
'In July 2021, the American billionaire Jeff Bezos completed the first private flight to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere and back in a spacecraft unapologetically resembling a giant penis. New Shepard, as it was called, carried Amazon’s owner, his brother Mark (Jeff’s spitting image), an 82-year-old ex-pilot, and a young Dutchman whose enthusiasm for the 8-minute space trip cost him $28 million. In the press conference after the landing, a grinning Bezos thanked all the Amazon customers around the world, saying, ‘you guys paid for this’. The audience indulged the good humour of one of the wealthiest men on the planet. Haha! None taken!' (Introduction)
'A surreal and satirical collection of short stories set in and around the world of advertising.'