Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City - Hardcover

Sicha, Choire

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061914304 ISBN 13: 9780061914300

Publisher: Harper, 2013

Synopsis

Choire Sicha's brilliant, enigmatic first book is a nonfiction account that reads like a novel. A voice from the future is piecing together a record of life in a massive city on the eastern coast of this country, and follows John, a sexually profligate reporter with a weekly newspaper, and his circle of friends as they navigate the expensive and dark world around them. It is a fable of money, sex, and politics featuring an imperious Mayor (the richest man in town), who is campaigning for an unprecedented third term, a Blind Governor, elevated to office in the wake of a prostitution scandal who is trying to overcome scandals of his own, and Beyonce. Told in Choire Sicha idiosyncratic style, Very Recent History is a work of detailed reportage and an Internet-era historical pastiche that seamlessly weaves together first-person interviews and current eventss, presenting a surreal and sublime portrait New York City circa 2009: an island of isolation, ambition, sublimation, and attraction.

About this title

Review:

"Sicha's prose, sweet and alienating by turns, transforms a city I know well and a year I lived through into something odd and wonderful." --Clay Shirky

From the Back Cover:

What will the future make of us?

In one of the greatest cities in the world, the richest man in town is the Mayor. Billionaires shed apartments like last season's fashion trends, even as the country's economy turns inside out and workers are expelled from the City's glass towers. The young and careless go on as they always have, getting laid and getting laid off, falling in and falling out of love, and trying to navigate the strange world they traffic in: the Internet, complex financial markets, credit cards, pop stars, microplane cheese graters, and sex apps.

A true-life fable of money, sex, and politics, Very Recent History follows a man named John and his circle of friends, lovers, and enemies. It is a book that pieces together our every day, as if it were already forgotten.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0061914304
• ISBN 13: 9780061914300
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256