Constance DeJonge's novel Modern Love is a postmodern classic, an example of the innovative prose of its time. It is a detective story and science fiction. It is the story of the expulsion of Sephardic Jews from Spain. It is a love story told from the heart of the Lower East Side. It is the story of Charlotte, Rodrigo, and Fifi Corday. It is a form that corrodes time, voice, and genre, meticulously constructed and at the same time personal. DeJonge, a key figure in the New York media art scene of the 1970s and 1980s, mailed Modern Love in installments, published it as a book, and turned it into an hour-long radio play, with music composed by Philip Glass. 'Written between 1975 and 1977 in the heart of the New York art world, Constance DeJonge's Modern Love is a forgotten classic of innovative narrative prose. Almost single-handedly, DeJonge invented a narrative form that was meticulously constructed yet still personal. Wilder than the French nouveau roman, Modern Love eviscerates genre and realist fiction, its narrative freewheeling through time to explore the contradictions of a twenty-seven-year-old misfit culturally told she can say and do whatever she wants. A major influence on Kathy Acker, Constance DeJonge's Modern Love seems even more radical today than it did when it was first published. Chris Kraus 'In the 1970s, Lower Manhattan discovered postmodernism, and Constance DeJonge's Modern Love played a crucial role. How? By transporting us to other places: Soho, Elizabethan England, India. Why is this book considered part of the fine art world? Because everyone was doing everything, and Modern Love captured that time with precision.' Martha Wilson

Author: Constance DeJong
Publishing House: No Kidding Press
Year: 2021
Number of pages: 256
Cover type: paperback
Translator: Sasha Moroz
Editor: Alexey Porvin
Age group: 18+