Jackie Ess is a writer and teacher.
Darryl
£ 11.99
Darryl
Jackie Ess
Underneath the sharp satire and hilarious sexual irreverence this is a deadly serious book: a brilliant novel of a seeker, like The Pilgrim’s Progress refracted by queer internet culture.
Darryl Cook is a cuckold, and that’s exactly how he likes it. He has an inheritance that spares him from work, a manageable and seemingly consequence-free drug habit, and a lovely wife called Mindy who’s generally game for anything—and for as much of it as she can get. But after an accidental overdose and some serious oversharing, Darryl’s world begins to crack up. Tormented by what seems to be the secret truth in sex, and less assured of that secret’s form, Darryl steps into what used to be called real life . . . Darryl is a disarmingly funny and unabashedly intelligent look at a community of people parsing masculinity, marriage, sex (and love) on their own terms.
- 978-1-7395161-7-8
- 21.6 x 13.9 cm
- 200 pp.
- Paperback
- 10 February 2025
About the author
Endorsements (6)
Running through it’s core is a torrent of wisdom at a fibre-optic pace with more power than even the most edited digital diatribe ... It’s a beautiful, genre-bending book — a jewel of the future that demands to be read, treasured, now.
Darryl crashes through the pieties of inclusive literature like a horny aurochs through an Apple Store. Jackie Ess’s vicious wit and humane soul refuse to settle for anything less than an enhanced interrogation of human frailty, here through the psychosexual evisceration of an ordinary, relatable guy who simply wants someone else to bang his wife. Who doesn’t? This book takes the raw power of the sentence seriously, which is the best way to be funny: Darryl is sprinting ahead of the reader, mooning, with knowledge they crave, and we must try our hardest to catch up. I was already breathless by page ten, my gut torn in half by horrified glee. I stayed awake all night reading and couldn’t work the next day. Jackie Ess is the best. Cuck rights!
One of the best novels on the planet.
Ess is what I might call a burgeoning cult literary figure, armed with an unmistakable lyric deadpan and a taste for provocative subject matter.
What Darryl is looking for is a crisis of sufficient severity that it will cause him to feel real to himself.
Jackie Ess’s debut novel is a smart, unexpected and extremely funny take on marriage, masculinity and desire, written from the perspective of a loser extraordinaire.
Press (9)
Top 5 works of satire, chosen by writer and cultural mischief maker Jackie EssThe Big Issue, 16543222/02/2025
Bourgeois Coldness
£ 13.99
Pre order in rile* books
Bourgeois Coldnesstrans. Grace Nissan
£ 13.99
Bourgeois Coldness
Henrike Kohpeiß
trans. Grace Nissan
Bourgeois coldness refers to an affective strategy that offers an explanation for how self-preservation works. Bourgeois coldness is one of the most advanced affective and aesthetic forms of preserving the structure of the colonial status quo. It creates an affective shelter in the world, unencroached upon by the immediate consequences of its many catastrophes. It functions like air conditioning – a complex technology which reliably stabilises the climate until those inside consider it natural. Bourgeois spaces – institutional and affective – stay cool and pleasant. But outside it’s burning.
Canonical critical theory by Adorno and Horkheimer enters a dialogue with Black studies through Hartman and Moten.
- 978-1-7395161-2-3
- 21.6 x 13.9 cm
- 280 pp.
- Paperback
- September 2025
About the author
Henrike Kohpeiß is a philosopher in Berlin, working on social and political philosophy, critical theory, affect studies, Black studies and feminist philosophy. She regularly publishes work in academic journals and criticism in magazines. She organises and hosts events in Berlin, such as the conversation series ‘Feelings at the end of the world’ at Volksbühne. Bourgeois Coldness is her first book, and was published in German in 2023 by Campus Verlag.
About the translator
Grace Nissan is the author of The Utopians (Ugly Duckling Presse) and The City Is Lush With / Obstructed Views (DoubleCross Press), as well as the translator of War Diary by Yevgenia Belorusets (New Directions) and kochanie, today i bought bread by Uljana Wolf (World Poetry Books). Their translations of Yevgenia Belorusets were presented in the 59th Venice Biennale, as well as in the accompanying publication In the Face Of War (Isolarii). They are the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Translation Fellowship to translate the Austrian poet Ann Cotten’s Banned! An Epic Poem into English.
Endorsements (2)
Foregrounding affect, this timely book provides an inestimable philosophical argument for the centrality of Blackness in critical examinations of capitalism’s violence.
Elegant and erudite in equal measure, this book will stand as a landmark diagnosis of the practices of denial in our time.
Press (2)
Upcoming (4)
| 10 November | Amsterdam | Henrike Kohpeiß launch |
| 06 November | London | Book launch Bourgeois Coldness, Historical Materialism |
| 04 November | London | Bourgeois Coldness launch, Housmans Bookshop |
| 02 October | Stockholm | Henrike Kohpeiß launches Bourgeois Coldness, Nord Books |