Julius Julius - by Aurora Stewart de Peña (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

With biting wit, Aurora Stewart de Peña satirizes the creative industry she's spent years in. From the people who brought you the invention of advertising comes Julius Julius, a rambling architectural wonder, outpost of the very first ad man of ancient Pompeii, built on the backs of generations of creative survivors who just want to lie on the floor of a conference room and cry about the lumber account without being sexually harassed.

Welcome to the world's oldest advertising agency, where ghosts control the board room AC, an ancient executive assistant runs a cave full of thousand year old billboards, and there are bones in the walls.

In a trio of voices from different time periods, we move through the mythical Agency, interrogating the process of stoking desire for a living. We meet the Senior Brand Anthropologist, who's being surprised by dirty bars of Irish Spring she can't remember buying, the Creative Director, whose ascent involved an ad campaign starring his dead best friend, and the Account Supervisor, whose only crime is not being a genius. (But the Fisherman Jack Tuna Campaign was her idea, despite what it says on the awards submissions.)

Stewart de Peña's debut novel reveals the cracks in the veneer of the creative industries, and the crisis of consciousness underneath in a novel full of compassion, humour, and blonde sausage dogs.

Review Quotes

"The rambling, mythic Agency reminded me at times of the enormous bathhouse from Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, or the infinite labyrinth of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, but ultimately could only be the creation of the singular imaginative force that is Aurora Stewart de Peña. A delight."
--Jordan Tannahill, author of The Listeners

"Julius Julius is the kind of satire I love, full of gentle wisdom and refusing to laugh at our expense. With imagination and tenderness, Stewart de Peña finds poetry in a pecuniary world of brand narratives and consumer manipulation, and asks us to forgive ourselves for buying in. This is a strange and beautiful book that wears big questions lightly."
--Martha Schabas, author of My Face in the Light

"de Peña is pillar of the D.I.Y. indie performance art community, inspiring and mobilizing with her incisive and audacious projects."
--Sook-Yin Lee, director of Paying For It

"A finely decorated glimpse into an advertising agency somehow floating outside of time. Stewart de Peña builds a dense, soft carpeted world of corridors that only an insider could give us, where the ad copy is so perspicuous it's educational. Despite its shadows (or because of them?), I would like to work at Julius Julius."
--Donovan Woods, singer-songwriter

"Julius Julius takes place at an advertising agency with a richly imagined, 2000-year history, housed in a labyrinthine building full of hidden wonders and lost souls. The novel is like that building: both unnerving and delightful, and made up of exquisite details. Aurora Stewart de Peña's debut is surreal in the way of a lucid dream, where anything could happen but everything makes sense. Throughout it all, the reader is warmly accompanied by Stewart de Peña's clear, congenial voice: Julius Julius is unsetting, sometimes terrifying, but shot through with humor and joy.

An award-winning playwright and advertising strategist, Stewart de Peña's one-of-a-kind sensibility, and devotion to craftsmanship, shines in everything she touches. She understands the art of creating ads, and the often amoral world of advertising--subjects that become captivating with her storytelling. Her understated absurdism recalls Flann O'Brien and Sarah Moss, while her imaginative rigor brings to mind Catherine Lacey, with Nicholson Baker's eye for small details that illuminate everything--she can derive a human epic from a tuna can.

Stewart de Peña is endlessly attentive to secret histories: the human drama that goes into creating a brand, or the human cost of erecting the buildings where our daily lives take place. A wholly original work of magic realism, Julius Julius immerses us in a strange and wonderful reality, while tuning our perception of the reality we know. Julius Julius is one of those rare novels that enlarges your attention in subtle, but indelible ways: the world seems bigger since I read it."
--Alexandra Molotkow

About the Author

AURORA STEWART DE PEÑA is a writer based in Toronto. Aurora's essays have appeared in Vice, Canadian Art, Real Life Magazine, and The Globe and Mail, and her fiction and poetry have appeared in The Ex-Puritan, Little Brother, and Petal Journal. Aurora's plays have been produced in Toronto at Buddies in Bad Times, The Harbourfront Centre, Summerworks, and The Factory Theatre, with others in New York, England, and Italy. She's worked for some of the country's most recognizable and awarded agencies, including Bensimon Byrne, Taxi, and Zulu Alpha Kilo. Recognized nationally and globally for her work, Aurora has won Clio, One Show, and D & AD awards among others.