The Centre is a place of rehabilitation and rebuilding. Students arrive nameless, their memories and sense of identity wiped by a strange illness.

Daily, they attend classes that will help them re-learn the right ways to speak and live; they practise the roles they’ll assume once graduated and returned to society, and pursue their true and authentic selves. In their free time, they negotiate a burgeoning social hierarchy and watch old cartridges together, replete with characters who consolidate their own identities and whose names they adopt: Maria, Chandler, Chino, Gunther…

But as the programme continues, fragments of memories threaten to disrupt the curriculum: memories of walking down supermarket aisles, of playing in an arcade, of stroking a dog in a field. Are these recollections real, or a symptom of lingering disease? How do such visions fit with the identities the Students have built for themselves?

With graduation approaching, it’s clear that some Students are not on track. And so, is it time to ask: what happens if you are silent when it’s your turn to speak? what if you are not as people say you are? And how do you describe something that sits between two meanings?

PRAISE FOR THE DEFINITIONS

“An unnerving story of our ominous present era huddled in a cloak of post-apocalyptic speculation, Matt Greene’s The Definitions digs—and digs hard—into the nature of language, of reality, of what we can and must not believe about what we’re told about ourselves and our world. It’s harrowingly well constructed, revealing its secrets in a series of icy, controlled detonations, and thoroughly earns the sense of heartbreak I’m sure you’ll feel at its finale. As I was reading I thought I detected glimpses of Ray Bradbury, of H. G. Wells and George Orwell, even of Lewis Carroll, but The Definitions is very much its own creature, and I am in awe of Greene’s taut, shiversome eloquence.” —Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer’s English

“A thrilling novel that asks profound questions about love and language, selfhood and memory. One of those books that you want to read again as soon as you’ve finished, it consoles even as it frightens, appalls even as it reveals how much we have to treasure. It has earned its place on my shelf of favorite science fiction, alongside Ishiguro, Ravn, Butler, and Chiang.” —Louisa Hall, author of Speak and Reproduction

“Deceptively gentle and ultimately devastating, The Definitions holds a delicate line between giving us enough to be utterly compelling, and quietly paring back enough to keep us guessing. The Centre, the narrator and the drifting language will haunt my thoughts, and my words, for some time.”  —Han Smith, author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking

“A novel pulsing with intelligence and razor-edged with wit. Matt Greene’s The Definitions probes the vulnerabilities of human memory, exposing the extent to which identity is forged by language and the landfill of pop culture. No one should forget to read this book before the end times come.” — Benjamin Wood, author of Seascraper

“A terrifying glimpse at what happens when language, self and memory are taken from us. Shimmers with intelligence, terror and deep humanity.” ― Ben Pester, author of The Expansion Project and Am I in the Right Place?

“A slippery, sinister treat of a novel, with a tender heart. Like the innocent inmates of this enigmatic facility, Matt Greene plays constant, original games with words, meanings and memory; unlike them, he is in complete control. An unnerving, compelling delight, somewhere between Severance and Never Let Me Go.” – Will Wiles, author of Plume.

“A tense, unsettling, superbly-woven fable. A stirring ode to how bravely we fight to find ourselves after immense loss.” – Musa Okwonga, author of In The End It Was All About Love

“An elliptical and unsettling entry into the canon of contemporary dystopias.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Thought-provoking and smart.” – The Express

Find The Definitions at Amazon.