2 A.M. in Little America - by Ken Kalfus (Paperback)

About the Book

"From National Book Award finalist Ken Kalfus, a novel imagining a future in which civil conflict has forced America's young people to flee its borders into an unwelcoming world."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

From "an important writer in every sense" (David Foster Wallace), a novel that imagines a future in which sweeping civil conflict has forced America's young people to flee its borders, into an unwelcoming world.

One such American is Ron Patterson, who finds himself on distant shores, working as a repairman and sharing a room with other refugees. In an unnamed city wedged between ocean and lush mountainous forest, Ron can almost imagine a stable life for himself. Especially when he makes the first friend he has had in years--a mysterious migrant named Marlise, who bears a striking resemblance to a onetime classmate.

Nearly a decade later--after anti-migrant sentiment has put their whirlwind intimacy and asylum to an end--Ron is living in "Little America," an enclave of migrants in one of the few countries still willing to accept them. Here, among reminders of his past life, he again begins to feel that he may have found a home. Ron adopts a stray dog, observes his neighbors, and lands a repairman job that allows him to move through the city quietly. But this newfound security, too, is quickly jeopardized, as resurgent political divisions threaten the fabric of Little America. Tapped as an informant against the rise of militant gangs and contending with the appearance of a strangely familiar woman, Ron is suddenly on dangerous and uncertain ground.

Brimming with mystery, suspense, and Kalfus's distinctive comic irony, 2 A.M. in Little America poses several questions vital to the current moment: What happens when privilege is reversed? Who is watching and why? How do tribalized politics disrupt our ability to distinguish what is true and what is not? This is a story for our time--gripping, unsettling, prescient--by one of our most acclaimed novelists.

Review Quotes

Praise for 2 A.M. in Little America

"Deeply intriguing . . . A tense and often beautiful work of reflection on the American present . . . 2 A.M. in Little America is a highly readable, taut novel. It pulls the reader into its world, and suggests that many interesting human complications await us at the end of the story called the United States of America."--New York Times Book Review

"Kalfus has a gift for penetrating to the core of current events and presenting issues in a provocative way . . . [2 A.M. in Little America is] a quietly dystopian novel that presents an unsettling portrait of a humbled America as seen through the eyes of a migrant who is a not entirely reliable narrator."--Washington Post

"Kalfus is one of contemporary literature's best-kept secrets. He's a writer's writer through and through, but with 2 A.M. in Little America, he's poised to make a major crossover to the mainstream . . . Kalfus explores powerful questions about tribalization, alienation, and exile."--Esquire

"From the undersung Kalfus, another tonally intricate triumph, this one about the bewilderment, alienation, and sheer strangeness of being a refugee . . . A strange, highly compelling tale about what happens when American privilege and insulation get turned inside out."--Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"A work of art [that] looks further ahead, responding to our present moment by imagining a possible future."--Colorado Review of Books

"Ken Kalfus is American literature's best-kept secret: his ideas are weird, his writing is limber, his ironic eye is gimlet, and yet no one seems to talk about him. Maybe that will change with [2 A.M. in Little America]."--Literary Hub

"Kalfus returns with a subtly provocative dystopian story . . . Part of the thrill of Kalfus's engrossing story is in how he pieces together the details of his near-future world . . . [2 A.M. in Little America] takes hold on the reader."--Publishers Weekly

"As it progresses, [this] tale becomes a potent warning about the consequences of ideological fervor. Heartbreaking and sobering, the dystopian novel 2 A.M. in Little America has the makings of a modern classic."--Foreword Reviews, Starred Review

About the Author

Ken Kalfus is the author of 2 A.M. in Little America. He is also the author of three other novels--Equilateral; A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, a finalist for the National Book Award; and The Commissariat of Enlightenment--and the story collections Thirst and Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies, the latter a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the basis for the HBO film Pu-239. He lives in Philadelphia.