TEHRAN – “Here Goes Nothing”, Austrian writer Steve Toltz’s wildly inventive, savagely funny and topical novel about love, mortality and the afterlife, has been published in Persian.

Cheshmeh is the publisher of book translated by Peyman Khaksar, whose translation of Toltz’s novel “Quicksand” was published by the company in 2016.

First published on March 3, 2022, “Here Goes Nothing”, follows Angus, a reformed ne’er-do-well looking forward to the birth of his first child when he’s murdered by a man who is in love with his pregnant wife Gracie.

Having never believed in God, heaven or hell, Angus finds himself in the afterlife - a place that provides more questions than answers. 

As a worldwide pandemic finally reaches the shores of Australia, the afterlife starts to get very crowded and Angus finds a way to reconnect with his wife Gracie and maybe even seek revenge on his murderer...

“Here Goes Nothing” is a novel of exhilarating originality and scope about birth, death and everything in between and after by “a writer of prodigious talent” (Peter Carey) that contains a vision of the afterlife that rivals Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and George Saunders’ “Lincoln in the Bardo”, and the Emmy-nominated “The Good Place”.

Toltz graduated from the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1994. Prior to his literary career, he lived in Montreal, Vancouver, New York, Barcelona and Paris, variously working as a cameraman, telemarketer, security guard, private investigator, English teacher and screenwriter.

“A Fraction of the Whole”, his first novel, was released in 2008 to widespread critical acclaim. It is a comic novel, which tells the history of a family of Australian outcasts. 

The novel has repeatedly been compared favorably to John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “A Confederacy of Dunces”. “A Fraction of the Whole” was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and the 2008 Guardian First Book Award.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian edition of Steve Toltz’s novel “Here Goes Nothing”.

MMS/YAW