A Hologram for the King: a novel - Softcover

Eggers, Dave

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241145864 ISBN 13: 9780241145869

Publisher: Penguin, 2013

Synopsis

New from Dave Eggers, National Book Award finalist A Hologram for the King.

In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment - and a moving story of how we got here.

Praise for A Hologram for the King:

'Absorbing . . . modest and equally satisfying: the writing of a comic but deeply affecting tale about one man's travails that also provides a bright, digital snapshot of our times' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

'A fascinating novel' New Yorker

'A spare but moving elegy for the American century' Publishers Weekly

'Eggers understands the pressures of American downward-mobility, and in the protagonist of his novel, Alan Clay, has created an Everyman, a post-modern Willy Loman . . . The novel operates on a grand and global scale, but it also is intimate' Chicago Tribune

'Completely engrossing' Fortune

'Eggers can do fiction as well as he likes' Los Angeles Times

Dave Eggers is the author of six previous books: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, How We Are Hungry, You Shall Know Our Velocity, What is the What, The Wild Things and Zeitoun. Zeitoun was the winner of the American Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and What is the What was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award and won France's Prix Médicis. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco. A native of Chicago, he lives in Northern California with his wife and two children.

About this title

Review:

A fascinating novel (New Yorker)

A spare but moving elegy for the American century (Publishers Weekly)

Completely engrossing (Fortune)

Dave Eggers is a prince among men when it comes to writing deeply felt, socially conscious books that meld reportage with fiction. [Hologram] is a strike against the current state of global economic in justice (Elissa Schappell Vanityfair.com)

From the Back Cover:

'Impressive, startling, compelling . . . proves how staggering a genius Eggers can be' Independent

American businessman Alan Clay is in Saudi Arabia. He's here selling IT to King Abdullah to help conjure a glittering city from the desert sands. But the king has yet to arrive. And Alan is slowly coming apart - he's up to his neck in debt, he's trying to keep hold of his family and he knows that this will be his very last roll of the dice. As the days stretch into weeks, Alan gets drawn into a world of mirages - where hopes and dreams shimmer and vanish under a blistering desert sun . . .

'Irresistible. Eggers' most accomplished book to date' Guardian

'Taut, richly layered and elegiac. A powerful evocation of our contemporary moment - and the moving story of how we got there' GQ

'Clever, likeable and very entertaining' Guardian

'Eggers's best book' London Review of Books

'A Beckettian masterpiece' Daily Telegraph

'Hugely impressive' Mail on Sunday

'Gripping, strange and terrifyingly believable' Sunday Times

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About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0241145864
• ISBN 13: 9780241145869
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336