About this item
Highlights
- National Book Award Finalist "Political satire at its best: scathing, funny, dark.
- L.A. Times Book Prize (Mystery/Thriller) 2006 3rd Winner
- Author(s): Jess Walter
- 368 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Psychological
Description
About the Book
In the tradition of Franz Kafka, Joseph Heller, and Don DeLillo, comes this extraordinary story of searing humor and sublime horror, of blindness, bewilderment, and that achingly familiar feeling that the world has suddenly stopped making sense.Book Synopsis
National Book Award Finalist
"Political satire at its best: scathing, funny, dark. Grade: A." --Entertainment Weekly
The breakout novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter: In the wake of a devastating terrorist attack, one man struggles to make sense of his world, even as the world tries to make use of him
Brian Remy has no idea how he got here. It's been only five days since terrorists attacked his city, and Remy is experiencing gaps in his life--as if he were a stone being skipped across water. He has a self-inflicted gunshot wound that he doesn't remember inflicting. His son wears a black armband and refuses to acknowledge that Remy is still alive. He seems to be going blind. He has a beautiful new girlfriend whose name he doesn't know. And his old partner in the police department, who may well be the only person crazier than Remy, has just gotten his picture on a box of First Responder cereal.
And these are the good things in Brian Remy's life. While smoke still hangs over the city, Remy is recruited by a mysterious government agency that is assigned to gather all of the paper that was scattered in the attacks. As he slowly begins to realize that he's working for a shadowy intelligence operation, Remy stumbles across a dangerous plot, and with the world threatening to boil over in violence and betrayal, he realizes that he's got to track down the most elusive target of them all--himself. And the only way to do that is to return to that place where everything started falling apart.
In the tradition of Catch-22, The Manchurian Candidate, and the novels of Ian McEwan, comes this extraordinary story of searing humor and sublime horror, of blindness, bewilderment, and that achingly familiar feeling that the world has suddenly stopped making sense.
From the Back Cover
The Zero is a groundbreaking novel, a darkly comic snapshot of our times that is already being compared to the works of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller.
From its opening pages--when hero cop Brian Remy wakes up to find he's shot himself in the head--novelist Jess Walter takes us on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of a devastating terrorist attack. As the smoke slowly clears, Remy finds that his memory is skipping, lurching between moments of lucidity and days when he doesn't seem to be living his own life at all. The landscape around him is at once fractured and oddly familiar: a world dominated by a Machiavellian mayor known as "The Boss," and peopled by gawking celebrities, anguished policemen peddling First Responder cereal, and pink real estate divas hyping the spoils of tragedy. Remy himself has a new girlfriend he doesn't know, a son who pretends he's dead, and an unsettling new job chasing a trail of paper scraps for a shadowy intelligence agency known as the Department of Documentation. Whether that trail will lead Remy to an elusive terror cell--or send him circling back to himself--is only one of the questions posed by this provocative yet deeply human novel.
From a novelist of astounding talent, The Zero is an extraordinary story of how our trials become our transgressions, of how we forgive ourselves and whether or not we should.
Review Quotes
"A ridiculously talented writer." -- New York Times
"In The Zero, Walter has created a satire/tragedy that Franz Kafka and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. might appreciate. . . . The Zero is different, in part because Walter succeeds in creating what he calls 'a 9/12 novel.'" -- USA Today
"This is political satire at its best: scathing, funny, dark. Grade: A." -- Entertainment Weekly
"A tense and compulsively readable roller-coaster ride fraught with psychological thrills, unanticipated dips and lurches, and existential truths. The novel frightened and fascinated me in equal measures. Walter has written a neo-noirish masterpiece." -- Wally Lamb, author of I know this Much is True
"A deliriously mordant political satire...Walter's Helleresque take on a traumatic time...carries off his dark and hilarious narrative with a grandly grotesque imagination." -- Publishers Weekly
"Walter goes from strength to strength, establishing himself as the current master of fractured U.S. history with all of the surrealism and black humor necessary for such an undertaking. Kafka would have to laugh." -- Library Journal
"A brilliant tour-de-force that's as heartrending as it is harrowing...the breakout novel of a brave and talented young writer." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Perceptive, ingenious satire...fascinating and important" -- BookPage
"Aa satire/tragedy that Franz Kafka and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. might appreciate." -- USA Today
"Exquisitely written. . . . Like a paranoid Being There, The Zero is suspenseful, satisfying and unforgettable." -- "Galley Talk" Publishers Weekly