Susan Daitch graduated from Barnard College and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She is the author of six novels and a collection of short stories. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Guernica, Tablet, Tin House, McSweeney's, Bomb, Conjunctions, The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction, and elsewhere. Susan's work was the subject of a Review of Contemporary Fiction, along with that of David Foster Wallace, and William Vollman. Her first novel, L.C., was a recipient of an NEA heritage award and a Lannan Foundation grant. Fall Out, a novella, was published by Madras Press, all proceeds donated to Women For Afghan Women. She has also received two Vogelstein Foundation awards and a Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her novel, Siege of Comedians was listed as one of the best books of 2021 in The Wall Street Journal. One of her essays was listed as a Notable in the Best American Essays 2022. Her work has been translated into German, Spanish, and Italian.

"An engrossing story that grapples with dystopian possibilities lying at the intersection of ethics and technology. In a not-too-distant future where the state regulates its citizens' genetics, a closeted empath gets called upon to investigate a death that challenges the infallibility of a totalitarian system. Blending SF with suspense and interweaving science with speculation, Daitch's novel offers readers a glimpse into a future that is as alien as it is disturbingly familiar."

-Kirkus

"In The Adjudicator, Susan Daitch delivers an intricately layered dystopia that reveals the havoc wreaked by genetic engineering and the pervasive reach of corporate power. With razor-edged prose, fierce intelligence, and humor she crafts a noir-infused tale of desperation and control, pushing the boundaries of the novel's form through multimedia elements to create an experience as thought-provoking as it is gripping."

--Ross Benjamin, translator of The Diaries of Franz Kafka

"How can something so smart, so ethically engaging, so subversive and sane, also be fun? Susan Daitch has made it happen, with wit and verve and empathy. Empathy is, at least partly, what The Adjudicator is about. Its narrator, sharing the DNA of a film noir gumshoe, searches for clues in a futuristic dystopia, a place where morality is up for grabs, where perfect control is a hair's breadth from chaos, a world both imaginary, and eerily reminiscent of our own."

--John Haskell, author of The Complete Ballet

"A bad trip journey through the tangled knot history of technology, art, and capitalism through the form of a sci-fi mystery page turner. Daitch's kaleidoscopic range is only bested by her stunning accomplishment--it burns in a million ways."

--Sammy Harkham, author of Everything Together

"Who are we when we become made-to-order? And do they take returns? Profound questions of self and consciousness are sewn into a propulsive spycraft plot set within a Byzantine surveillance state populated by designer babies. Susan Daitch expertly superimposes biotech, grim office politics, and literalized empathy to construct her Pynchonesque scenes. A mirror-dream to get lost in."

--Eugene Lim, author of Search History

"If the sentences comprising the text of this wonderful illustrated novel were to be disentangled, like a strand of DNA, they would stretch from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Brighton Beach."

--Ben Katchor, author of The Dairy Restaurant

FOREWORD REVIEWS (MARCH / APRIL 2025)

A woman hiding personal neurological secrets probes the limits of genetic control in The Adjudicator, Susan Daitch's tense dystopian novel.

Zedi, an adjudicator for Pangenica, a major corporation where babies' genes are coded to delete "extreme cases of physical or mental aberration" and fulfill parents' predetermined specifications, scrutinizes customer complaints. Zedi is tasked with an old case claiming a genetic switch between the consciousnesses of two children. As Zedi investigates this explosive possibility of genetically altering consciousness, she masks her mirror-touch synesthesia (experiencing others' observed feelings and sensations as her own) in a world wherein neurodivergence is erased.

Zedi's investigative commentary is deadpan, injecting dry, almost glib, levity into the text: The impossibility of forthright inquiries, she quips, is "like D-Day is approaching, you're an Allied soldier, and you walk i

Publisher: Green City Books

Pub date: 2025-02-25

Length: 367 pages