Out next March, Oliver K Langmead’s Gliteratti is said to be ‘A Clockwork Orange and RuPaul’s Drag Race meet Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind‘ in this dystopian fable about fashion, family and feckless billionaires.
Simone is one of the Glitterati, the elite living lives of luxury and leisure. Slave to the ever-changing tides – and brutal judgements – of fashion, he is immaculate. To be anything else is to be unfashionable, and no one wants to be unfashionable, or even worse, ugly…
When Simone accidentally starts a new fashion with a nosebleed at a party, another Glitterati takes the credit. Soon their rivalry threatens to raze their opulent utopia to the ground, as no one knows how to be vicious like the beautiful ones.
Can’t wait until next year to find out more about the Glitterati? Read our exclusive extract from the book below…
Unfortunately, Simone’s route to work took him above the streets of the city suburbs, where the poor unfashionables lived.
The windows of the pristine vibro-rail carriage revealed the depths below, where the houses were made for practicality instead of design. They looked, to Simone, like terrible parodies of the packaging that some of his least fabulous items of clothing came in.
The uglies. The unwashed, unmanicured masses. The unfashionables.
It pained him to see them down there, milling around without the first idea of how dreadful they appeared. Their untrained aesthetic senses were so underdeveloped that they could barely comprehend their own hideousnesses. To think, that they did actual labour! To think, they used things like shovels and wrenches and drills! Simone shuddered, but found himself unable to look away. The horror of it drew him in completely.
It was unfathomable that people existed like that.
The vibro-rail carriage slipped through a tunnel, and suddenly they were there, at the heart of the horror, where beyond the unornamented fences the unfashionables lumbered around. If only Simone’s tear ducts hadn’t been removed – why, he would have wept for them. Feeling his gut squirm around inside him, he watched them go by, bumping into each other, smiling their unpainted smiles, staring open-mouthed and lustily at the vibro-rail carriage as it swept past; at its contents – the beautiful glitterati.
To think that they were the same species. It boggled the mind.
Simone secretly hoped that the unfashionables would all catch a disease and die. Of course, it wasn’t fashionable to think such thoughts. The fashion was that the uglies were to be pitied, and that charity in the form of discarded past season wardrobes was a sign of good character. But Simone only said that he sent his old wardrobes down to the unfashionables. In reality, he burned his clothes when he was done with them. The mere thought of his discarded clothes touching the skin of any of those aesthetically impaired creatures made him feel ill.
So caught up in horror he was, that Simone barely noticed the vibro-rail carriage gliding to a halt. He was the last to leave.
The vast and crystalline Tremptor Tower rose ahead, and Simone felt his heart lift. It was like working in heaven – those fluted glass cylinders, which made the whole building look like an enormous celestial organ, always made him smile. He was careful with his smile, of course. It simply wouldn’t do to affect his face before making his entrance.
He checked his watch. Precisely twenty minutes late. Perfect.
Glitterati is out from Titan Books March 2022.
