Set in 1999 Japan, SATELLITE LOVE is a heartbreaking and beautifully unconventional debut novel about a girl, a boy, and a satellite—and a bittersweet meditation on loneliness, alienation, and what it means to be human.

SATELLITE LOVE
by Genki Ferguson
McClelland & Stewart/PRH Canada, March 2021
(chez The Friedrich Agency – voir catalogue)

Anna Obata is a biracial teenager living in economically depressed Southern Japan just before the millennium. Left to fend for herself (and to look after her increasingly senile Grandfather) Anna copes with her devastating loneliness by calling upon her strongest inner resource: imagination. This is the story of girl who falls in love with a satellite, yes—but it is also the story of how the human mind attempts to repair itself, no matter the cost, no matter the odds. Told in alternating perspectives by Anna, the satellite, and several others, SATELLITE LOVE is exquisitely strange and refreshingly unconventional.

Genki Ferguson was born in New Brunswick, Canada to a family of authors (his father is author Will Ferguson), and grew up reading Murakami. He spent much of his childhood in the subtropical island of Kyushu, Japan, where his mother’s family still resides. Fluent in Japanese and capable of making a decent sushi roll, Genki was also the recipient of the 2017 Helen Pitt Award for visual arts and is finishing a degree in Film Production, while working part-time at Book Warehouse, an indie store in Vancouver.