Sophie Frances Kemp was born in 1996 in Schenectady, New York. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, Vogue, GQ, Pitchfork, and The Baffler, among others. She received her MFA in fiction at Columbia University, where she now teaches in the writing program. She lives in Brooklyn.

"In Kemp's energetic debut, a young woman embarks on a quest to become 'the best girlfriend of all time'... The inventive conceit yields plenty of humor and incisive commentary. This funhouse portrait of the Brooklyn dating scene feels all too real."
--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"I devoured Sophie Kemp's charming, peculiar, and hilarious debut novel, Paradise Logic. Her iconic heroine Reality Kahn recalls Mary Robison's Money Breton and Lena Dunham's Sarah Jo, but ultimately, Kemp's novel is sui generis."
--ANNA DORN, author of Perfume & Pain

"A mythic heroine, on an odyssey to apotheosize via girlfriendhood."
--HELL GATE

"Paradise Logic is an astonishment, and the odyssey of Reality Kahn reads like the strangest, funniest, most profound, vibrant, and trippy dream you ever had, except it's not just a dream, it's a work of art, deeply real and dangerously alive. A great writer is bornth."
--SAM LIPSYTE, bestselling author of No One Left to Come Looking for You

"The funniest book of the year and one of the smartest."
--GARY SHTEYNGART, New York Times bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Absurdistan

"The 21st C heir apparent to Kathy Acker. Reality sets about her quest with a Quixotean determination. A wildly propulsive novel and delight to behold."
--JEN GEORGE, author of The Babysitter at Rest

"I loved this wild, roaming marvel of a debut, acutely aware that I was reading a book completely unlike any other, admiring this voice which metabolizes perennial concerns about love, identity and gender into some of the weirdest and funniest prose imaginable. It's a privilege to spend time with Sophie Kemp's singular mind."
--MEGAN NOLAN, author of Acts of Desperation and Ordinary Human Failings

"Sophie Kemp's absurd, horny, and epic debut had me asking questions like: Is existence meaningless and random? And most importantly­, how can I make my eyes resemble those of an introspective family pet?"
--RUTH MADIEVSKY, author of All-Night Pharmacy and Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction

"I read this book through a customized monocle because it was finally too bright, too intense, and too wild. Death to reality! Long live Reality!"
--BEN MARCUS, author of Leaving the Sea and The Flame Alphabet

"Kemp's writing is ambitious and fresh while engaging with the recurring theme of women's role as a vessel for men's desires in a patriarchal society... With an impressive ear for rhythm, Kemp's writing shines throughout this imaginative novel."
--BOOKLIST, Starred Review

"Bizarre, brilliant . . . boldly funny and interesting."
--OUR CULTURE

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pub date: 2025-03-25

Length: 256 pages