Nick Cave: The Death of Bunny Munro at iTunes App Store

Nick Cave's The Death of Bunny Munro app available at iTunes App Store

Faber and Faber has announced the launch of a new application on the iTunes App Store for the new novel from legendary rock musician Nick Cave, The Death of Bunny Munro available now!

The Death of Bunny Munro is a furious, funny, disturbing account of a traveling salesman’s last days on earth.

Nick Cave will be interviewed by Katherine Lanpher as part of the Upstairs at the Square series at New York City’s Barnes and Noble, Union Square, on September 14, 2009, at 7:00 p.m.

Enhanced Editions and Faber and Faber announced the launch of The Death of Bunny Munro App on the App Store. The app, which includes an enhanced e-book, cutting edge audiobook and videos of Cave reading the book, is exclusively available to iPhone and iPod touch users. It is a landmark release of a book for which Nick Cave wrote the first chapter on his own iPhone.

The Death of Bunny Munro App includes an unabridged audiobook read by Nick Cave, featuring an original soundtrack by Cave and long-time musical collaborator Warren Ellis. It is produced and sound-directed by British artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard.

The audiobook features a groundbreaking 3D audio spatial mix, specifically designed for listening on headphones, creating an immersive experience for the listener that is unprecedented for an audiobook. Forsyth and Pollard enlisted a team of leading acousticians at Arup Acoustics in New York to plot the sound in both physical and emotional three-dimensional spaces.

"The idea of creating a book which can be experienced in different ways is exciting for me. Iain and Jane, with Arup, have created a groundbreaking audio journey which allows the listener to experience the book in a hitherto unprecedented third dimension," said Nick Cave. "Enhanced Editions have brilliantly entwined reading, listening to and viewing the story. The fact that the reader can choose his or her own experience is interesting because the true meaning of a book lies in the reader’s own interpretation and the circumstances of that interpretation."

The e-book has been created by Enhanced Editions, a new e-book production house co-founded by Peter Collingridge of the digital design company Apt Studio, working in partnership with Canongate Books. As well as familiar e-book features such as the ability to change font size, and bookmark pages, the Enhanced Edition also includes the ability to switch between audio and text versions of the book or watch videos, which radically change the reading experience.

The app has been developed in partnership with Canongate Books in the UK, Harper Collins in Canada and Text Publishing in Australia.

"We are seizing the opportunity presented by the revolutionary iPhone to offer consumers a more immersive and memorable reading experience than current e-readers, whilst honouring the best traditions of book design," said Peter Collingridge. "We are confident that this enhanced edition of Nick’s brilliant novel will bring new readers to the book who will also be delighted by the audio and visual features."

"We set out to create an immersive and transportive 3D listening experience. We've not heard anything like this before - the result sits somewhere between a film soundtrack, a radio play and an hallucination," said Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. "Working from fragments of music provided by Warren and Nick, we introduced real-world sound effects, and then sent this to Arup with a spatialisation script to construct a complete soundscape for the narrative designed not only to enhance your experience but also to disturb and interrupt it. For example, you hear sounds occupy the acoustic space inside Bunny’s canary yellow Punto, you hear the infrasonic rumblings of elephants mating on the TV in the corner of the room and you experience the sound of fear rising from the pit of your stomach..."

Dan Franklin, Digital Editor at Canongate Books says: "Both the enhanced e-book and audiobook deliver on the promise of the digital era in books, first and foremost because of Nick Cave’s multi-faceted creative talent, but also because of the skills, flair and collaborative ethic of Warren Ellis, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Enhanced Editions and Arup Acoustics. This is the real deal."

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Nick Cave on amazon.com

Nick Cave on amazon.co.uk

The long-awaited second novel from “one of the great writers on love of our era” (Will Self), Nick Cave’s shocking and funny The Death of Bunny Munro tells the story of a door-to-door salesman in search of a soul on a bizarre road trip with his son, Bunny Junior, and his adventures in violence, death, sex, and the occult.

“Put Cormac McCarthy, Franz Kafka, and Benny Hill together in a Brighton seaside guesthouse and they might just come up with Bunny Munro . . . [The Death of Bunny Munro] emerges emphatically as the work of one of the great cross-genre storytellers of our age: a compulsive read possessing all of Nick Cave’s trademark horror and humanity, often thinly disguised in a galloping, playful romp.” - Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting

“After a two-decade pause, the post-punk singer-songwriter finally follows up his well-received first novel (And the Ass Saw the Angel) with a lurid fantasia about a drug-addled salesman. This could easily be the literary companion to Cave’s recent howling performances with garage band Grinderman.” - Kirkus Reviews

“[The Death of Bunny Munro is] not just a wonderful read, but also a heartbreaking one. Cave writes novels like he does lyrics, with strokes of blood and sulfur and lightning.” - Neil LaBute, author of Reasons to be Pretty

“Bunny’s deterioration from swaggering Lothario to sputtering pity case suggests he is carrying around more guilt than he cares to admit, and his obsessive behavior . . . allows for an interesting portrait of modern family dynamics.” - Publishers Weekly

Other features include:

- Synchronisation between the audiobook and written text, allowing the reader to switch from reading to listening without losing his or her place.

- Eleven videos of Cave reading from the book, filmed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard.

- Option for fans to receive exclusive news from the author.

- Ability to tilt the device to scroll the text.

- Option to share quotes from the book with others by email.

The Death of Bunny Munro application on iTunes

The Death of Bunny Munro Official Website