Demetri Martin’s first book, This Is a Book, is the renowned comedian’s hilarious foray into prose comedy. In these pages, Martin expands on the sensibility he’s developed on stage as an award-winning stand-up comedian and on television as a writer-performer on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and his own Comedy Central series, Important Things with Demetri Martin.

Featuring narrative essays and short stories as well as Martin’s signature drawings, absurdities, and one-liners, This Is a Book takes readers to places as far-off as Ancient Greece (“Socrates’s Publicist”) and the distant future (“Robot Test,” where everyone must take a test to prove that they are not robots). He examines the human condition (“Human Cannonball Occupational Hazards”) and the competing world-views of divergent groups (“Optimist, Pessimist, Contortionist”).