A speculative novel set in present-day Berlin, Oval takes place in a milieu shaped by tech utopianism, sustainability culture, gentrification, and the listless drifting characteristic of the overwhelmed. There's a Pynchon-esque corporation which absorbs everything it sees and an alienated protagonist who falls somewhere between Didion and Moshfegh, all taking place in a weatherscape which has flipped, an uncanny premonition of things to come. A novel where the natural and artificial, where human and plant, begin to dissolve, ending at last with just one woman in a landscape while the city burns. Oval is like a bad dream you're comforted to watch unfold, so inevitable does it feel.
— Madeleine
Set in an unspecified near future in Berlin, on an artificial mountain and experiment in sustainable living called the Berg, Oval takes place in a world that is somehow both a satirical caricature and an alarmingly feasible vision of the future. Wilk's themes are numerous and wide reaching - all circling around the vacuousness of neoliberalism and the fragility of humanity's future - but ultimately, for me, this is a book about the dissolution of a relationship, an interior shift that mirrors the recognition of apocalypse.
— Nick