Rejection rarely begins with a clear no for Tony Tulathimutte. Instead, it seeps into his characters, mutating into indignation, obsession, and ultimately a full-blown ideology. In Fiasko, the 1983-born American author threads seven sharp, at times ambitiously bold stories into a grotesque panorama of society and a portrait of present-day mores.
His figures voice their loneliness as a social indictment: a young man stages himself as a “man who gets women” to cope with a string of rejections (“better to stay friends…”), finally pinning his sexual frustration on the women themselves (“The Feminist”). An unhappy-in-love woman spirals into ruinous obsession (“Pics”), a gay man tormented by sexually sadistic fantasies (“Ahegao”), and a career-driven lover drags his partner into a fever of optimization (“Our Future Will Be Dope”).
The Precise Tone of the Net
Tulathimutte’s characters are uniformly solitary, self-absorbed, and convinced that the world owes them something. Recurrent motifs like the incel or Nice Guy scenes stitch together across the individual stories to form a dark view of society in the digital age. The book examines not only the abysses of online losers, but also the moral arrogance of their onlookers.
The real achievement of Fiasko lies in the nimbleness of the language. Tulathimutte deftly channels the cadence of dating apps, group chats, Reddit threads, and ideological online debates. When a dispute in a chat group spirals, one of the women writes: “only good vibes in this space here please, I don’t enjoy playing the drama queen, but this conflict isn’t great for my psyche, to be honest.” Or when a self-styled self-improver gaslights his girlfriend: “Everything I say and do is so terrible, and I have NEVER done you any good, and you have NEVER been wrong in life, IT’S MY fault that you’re sitting on the couch all day and twiddling your thumbs—what a partner I am.”
Not Suitable for Every Mood
Fiasko is not for every mood or audience: the sexual fantasies and humiliations can be off-putting. Yet it is precisely these hyperboles that give the work its sharp satirical edge. The book compels readers to move between disgust, Schadenfreude, and empathy.
Tony Tulathimutte: Fiasko. Fictions. Translated from English by Stefanie Jacobs, Stefanie Ochel and Jan Schönherr. 384 pages. dtv. Munich 2026. Hardcover: $28. ISBN 978-3-423-28577-3. E-book: $21.
