Olivia Sudjic is a British fiction writer whose first book Sympathy received positive reviews in the press, from publications such as the New York Times, The Guardian and The New Republic.
Background
Sudjic was born in London, England. Wanting to be a writer since she was a child, Sudjic studied at the City of London School for Girls and then read English Literature at Trinity Hall, Cambridge where she won the E.G. Harwood English Prize. About the craft of writing, she believes that "Novels are comparable to social media or crafting online profiles because you begin and you think you’re going to know this person. But this person isn’t real. It’s all made up, and you’re projecting yourself onto it."
''Sympathy'' (2017)
Sympathy revolves around a twenty-something woman visiting New York who becomes obsessed with an older woman via the social media app Instagram. The book is recognized for addressing generational differences: "A child of the age of algorithms, she notices everything but knows the value and significance of nothing." As for the structure, it resembles the disjointed experience of surfing the internet, thereby reinforcing the story's focus on technology. The reviews for Sympathy have been enthusiastic. The New Republic refers to the novel as "a remarkable debut, and with the arrival of such a novelist we can finally welcome our techno-dystopian future with open arms." According to The New Republic, Sympathy is "The First Great Instagram Novel", dealing with obsession and smartphone technology. The article goes on to say: "Rarely do novels so ostentatiously of the moment succeed so well at gesturing to the universal." The novel was also mentioned in Vanity Fair, The Financial Times, The Spectator, The Telegraph, Elle, Esquire, Star Tribune, The Times, The New Yorker and Vice, among others. Originally from the UK, Sudjic began writing Sympathy in 2014 while staying with her grandmother in Manhattan. New York City ended up becoming integral to the story, representing the protagonist's "...searching and longing for connection." In the beginning, Sudjic intended to write an historical novel, but changed her mind and set the story in contemporary times. Sympathy has been described as a feminist work, with Sudjic stating that the internet is male dominated and also that women writers are more pressured to talk about their personal lives then their male counterparts.
''Exposure'' (2018)
Sudjic's second book, Exposure, was published on 1 November 2018 by Peninsula Press.
An essay on the anxiety epidemic, autofiction and internet feminism. After the release of Sympathy, her debut novel which explores surveillance and identity in the internet age, Olivia Sudjic found herself under the microscope. Trapped in an anxious spiral of self-doubt, she became alienated from herself and her work. Blaming her own mental-health masked a wider problem that still persists: the tendency for writing by women, whether fiction or personal testimony, to be invalidated on the grounds of sex. Drawing on Sudjic’s experience of anxiety — as well as the work of Elena Ferrante, Maggie Nelson, Jenny Offill, Rachel Cusk and others — Exposure examines the damaging assumptions that attend female artists, indeed any woman who risks exposure, as well as the strategies by which one might escape them.
