Everything You Ever Wanted, Luiza Sauma
Everything You Ever Wanted, Luiza Sauma
List: $13.50 | Sale: $9.44
Club: $6.75

Everything You Ever Wanted
A Florence Welch Between Two Books Pick

Author: Luiza Sauma

Narrator: Stephanie Racine

Unabridged: 9 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 06/27/2019


Synopsis

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Everything You Ever Wanted written by Luiza Sauma, read by Stephanie Racine.

You wake up. You go to work. You don't go outside for twelve hours at a time. You have strategy meetings about how to use hashtags. After work you order expensive drink after expensive drink until you're so blackout drunk you can't remember the circumstances which have led you to waking up in bed with your colleague. The next day you stay in bed until the afternoon, scrolling through your social media feeds and wondering why everyone else seems to be achieving so much. Sometimes you don't get out of bed at all.

Then you hear about Life on Nyx, a programme that allows 100 lucky winners the chance to escape it all, move to another planet and establish a new way of life. One with meaning and purpose. One without Instagram and online dating. There's one caveat: if you go, you can never come back.

But you aren't worried about that.

After all, what on Earth could there possibly be to miss?

About Luiza Sauma

Luiza Sauma was born in Rio de Janeiro and raised in London. After studying English at the University of Leeds, she worked at the Independent on Sunday for several years. She has an MA in Creative & Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was awarded the Pat Kavanagh Award in 2014. She has also been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She is the author of Flesh and Bone and Water and Everything You Ever Wanted.


Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on August 03, 2025

dystopian books where our world is the dystopia >>> (review to come)......more

Goodreads review by margot on March 06, 2022

i literally finished this book in less than a day. this story is such a hopeful commentary on the simple joys that life can bring and how human beings take such things for granted. i not realize how much you can miss something only once it's gone. with this story's unique and emotional flares, i can......more

Goodreads review by daniella ❀ on October 26, 2022

this book deserves MORE hype......more

Goodreads review by Blair on May 28, 2019

I wanted to read Everything You Ever Wanted from the moment I heard about it. It’s set in a slightly altered version of our reality in which a habitable planet, Nyx, has been discovered. Nyx is accessed via an underwater wormhole in the Pacific Ocean, and there’s no way back. The opening chapter qui......more

Goodreads review by casey on October 24, 2021

i wouldn’t go into this expecting the story to focus so much on the concept of nyx being fully fleshed out and explored, it’s a lot more about the build up of someone’s motivation to leave everything/one they know and love behind and the aftermath of going through with it. then having to reach their......more


Quotes

Sauma skewers the falsities and disappointments of contemporary life and work with rare sensitivity, unfolding an evocative narrative of unearthly escape. I loved it

Every now and then, a book comes along and pins down the wild thoughts that have been circling around in your brain as you question the meaning of your life in the bath at midnight. Manages to sensitively unpack the frustrations of modern life while appreciating how funny the banality of it all is Refinery29

An important and poignant novel that captures the ennui, panic and stubborn optimism of the zeitgeist with spirit, humour and a fearless portrayal of human truth

Beautifully written . . . Everything You Ever Wanted explores our current obsession with a meaningful life Bookseller

Everything You Ever Wanted is one of the most original and urgent novels I've read this year. Sauma dives under the skin of the way we live now and makes it into an astonishing new shape. Funny, heart-breaking and thought-provoking - a novel that talks about all the things we are most afraid to talk about. Read it!

Sauma's wondrous novel could not be more timely. Captures the era of social media addiction and status anxiety perfectly. . . . with echoes of The Truman Show and 1984 The Gloss

Uplifting, unputdownable and mordantly funny, Everything You Ever Wanted is the dystopian beach read you didn't know you needed. It's a love letter to London from outer space. It's both a speculative dystopian drama and a deadpan office satire. It's a brilliantly relatable and ambitious ode to the humdrum and the sublime; a truly original novel that captures the pleasures and displeasures of modern, earthly life.

Everything You Ever Wanted is so sharp-eyed about our hidden hopes and tiny hypocrisies. Even the most fantastical elements feel painfully, perfectly true. I'd follow Sauma's voice down any wormhole

A daring and original novel that asks profound questions about the way we live today whilst being simultaneously playful and fun. Sauma is brilliant at nailing the details of contemporary life in a way that is recognisable to anyone who has suffered the mundanity of office jobs.

Courageous, haunting, and beautiful-with EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED, Luiza Sauma takes us on a breathtaking voyage through both the farthest reaches of space and the innermost depths of the human soul