Geek Love is a novel by American writer Katherine Dunn, published completely by Alfred A. Knopf (a division of Random House) in 1989. Dunn published parts of the novel in Mississippi Mud Book of Days (1983) and Looking Glass Bookstore Review (1988). It was a finalist for the National Book Award.
The novel is the story of a traveling carnival run by Aloysius "Al" Binewski and his wife "Crystal" Lil, and their children, seen through the eyes of their daughter Olympia ("Oly"), who writes the family history for her daughter Miranda. When the business begins to fail, the couple devise an idea to breed their own freak show, using various drugs and radioactive material to alter the genes of their children. The results are Arturo ("Arty", also known as "Aqua Boy"), She has described the genesis of the book, which took her nearly ten years to write and more than that to publish it, in 1989. She said "All the time I was working on Geek Love, it was like my own private autism."
Publishing design
The book's original cover art by Chip Kidd caused a sensation at book conventions when it was introduced in 1989.
Reception and legacy
The novel was published on March 11, 1989, with an initial printing of 20,000 copies. the book sold more than 400,000 copies, 10,000 of them ebooks. The Wachowskis also have expressed interest in adapting it for the screen, and Warner Bros. decided to purchase the adaptation rights "indefinitely". This adaptation was reprised in Atlanta for summer 2004 and then taken to the New York Fringe Festival later that year.