Finalist for the 2022 Philip K. Dick Award
With the wicked humor and imagination that made readers fall in love
with his novel I Am God, Giacomo Sartori brings us a madcap story of
family dysfunction, (dis)ability, intelligent robots, bees, and a family
of misfit savants living outside the bounds.
In the singular world of the young, deaf narrator of Bug, there are
just a handful of people who try to understand him when he gets into
trouble at school. His father, a data analyst for Nutella whose real job
is to pinpoint terrorists, is clueless about humans in real life. His
brilliant brother, called IQ in public and Robin Hood in the
hackersphere, has his back but is ever busier training his robot. His
grandfather, a retired anarchist-guerilla-turned-nematologist, chides
him for misbehaving when he takes him hunting for worms. Meanwhile, his
Buddhist beekeeper mother, ordinarily his closest confidante, has been
in a coma ever since a terrible car accident.
Just when the family's survival in their converted chicken coop seems
most precarious, someone--or something--new enters his life: Bug. This
self-declared "fast friend" seems to know all about his family and has
some creative, if not strictly legal, ideas about how to help....
