Movie star Keanu Reeves can now add novelist to his resume. The Matrix actor is coming out with his debut novel The Book of Elsewhere, which he co-wrote with China Miéville, a science fiction writer known for books like The City & The City and Perdido Street Station.
The book, coming out next week, is based on a series of comics that Reeves wrote called BRZRKR. In the series, the main character, named B, is an immortal 80,000-year-old warrior who has fought his whole life trying to discover the meaning of his existence and hopefully end it. The novel includes the U.S. government, a 78,000-year-old pig, and ancient armadillos. Netflix is currently adapting the BRZRKR universe into a series and feature film.
In an interview with The New York Times, Reeves and Miéville talked more about the project. “It was important to us approach this in a way that did something new, that did something that was very specifically literary in the sense of using the novel and using the novel form, that nonetheless was unabashedly and joyfully a BRZRKR novel and that honors the source material,” Miéville told the paper. As an actor, Reeves found inspiration to write the book because he viewed it as “another version of storytelling.”
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Later in the interview, Reeves elaborated more on what was revealed through the writing process. He says, through writing the book, he got to things like “death,” “violence,” and “technology.” In their conversation, both Reeves and Miéville expressed interest in continuing this story, possibly in a play or poem.
As far as reception goes, it’s been largely positive. The Los Angeles Times called it “a profoundly stylish and beautiful approach to the trials and tribulations of the ancient warrior who cannot die.” The 352-page book is currently available for preorder.
