Forthcoming in October 2026 with Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK and Astra House in the US.
“An immersing, crystalline debut novel that reaches out to a world in crisis; elegant, emotional, deeply serious and gloriously witty.”
—Deborah Levy
“The world—that is, the protagonist—floats through opaque settings of fateful money, violent strangers and ghostly love; a tender, guilty work of wish-fulfillment and the most valuable kind of first novel, documenting the author’s struggle to reconcile right action with the egomaniac work of writing books.”
—Nell Zink
“Channeling Adolfo Bioy Casares, Eastham carries a vision of art’s complicity with power to its endgame. If Art Basel is now globalized, then so is Minneapolis. Looping civilization back to end where it began, in Athens, he proposes that the only counterforce to fascism is love.”
—Tom McCarthy
“Startlingly imaginative, The Floating World is at times like the work of a J. G. Ballard for the 2020s, at others like the reincarnation of Italo Calvino. Eastham is as deft with a finely observed comic riff as he is with a heart-stoppingly lovely description of a city, a gesture, a connection. In his hands, what could have been a satire of art-world hubris becomes something so attuned to the world—its wonder and its clear and present danger . . . I don’t want to sound mawkish, but ultimately it’s a novel about our boundless potential to connect, and what we should ultimately value.”
—Luke Kennard
“Novels like this don’t come around very often. Ben Eastham’s The Floating World is transporting in every sense of the word. A meditation on the brutal and beautiful nexus where art and money meet, an odyssey of grief and discovery, a rallying cry against the people ruining the world from those that are trying to change it. It’s a towering achievement.”
—Dominic Amarena
“An astute satire about the absurdities of the artworld, a compelling mystery and an elegy, The Floating World is unputdownable: frequently funny, often moving and always intriguing.”
—Jennifer Higgie
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The Imaginary Museum
September 2020
Published: 6 August 2020 in a print edition, as an audiobook and in a Kindle edition. Click here to buy via the Harper Collins website.
– “Ben Eastham is a critic with intelligence, verve and delirious wit, and in this essay he makes a lovely experiment with art criticism: proposing contemporary art as a charmed space for us all to explore a radical and comical subjectivity – flâneurs freed from the illusion of connoisseurship.”
—Adam Thirlwell
– “A splendid journey through the brilliant thought-constellations that deftly gather shape and luminosity in the mind of a young art critic.”
—Chloe Aridjis
– “The Imaginary Museum is the most inventive writing on art I’ve read in a long while. By inviting us into his made-up institution, Ben Eastham opens up a space for reflection on how contemporary art helps us make sense of ourselves and the world around us. This is a brilliant book – a museum in the form of a parable.”
—Lauren Elkin
– “There’s no place I’d rather visit now than Ben Eastham’s Imaginary Museum.”
—Jennifer Kabat
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My Life as a Work of Art
with Katya Tylevich
September 2016
– “Mr. Eastham is the star of the show … a terrific, ferociously self-effacing writer … achingly funny.”
—Wall Street Journal
– “Passionate, original, perceptive.”
—Ben Luke, The Art Newspaper
– “A witty and intelligent defence of contemporary art.”
—Hans Ulrich Obrist