The Society of Others: A Novel [Paperback]

Cool, clear-eyed, and bluntly cynical, the young narrator of The Society of Others embarks on a journey without a destination. He hitchhikes through Europe only to find himself in a mystifying country where terrorists are inexplicably after him, and so is a sinister government. In a surreal landscape where people are shot to death without reason and social control runs deep, he must learn who to trust–and what to stand for. Fast paced and provocative, a gripping philosophical thriller, The Society of Others is an ingenious meditation on the nature of contemporary innocence and identity.“Hovers between the wisecracking observational realism of Salinger and the parable dream space of Kafka. . . . A paean to humanism and perhaps faith.” –Salon

“One part spy novel, one part mystical fable. . . . Forges a provocative amalgam of the
humane and the homicidal.” –San Diego Tribune

“Both a joy to read and intellectually challenging.” –The Baltimore Sun

“A smart, engrossing allegorical taleÉa dystopic fable for the twenty-first
century.” –Montreal Gazette

"This is a novel I would dearly love to have written yet one whose message is an antidote for envy. It is exciting, funny, wise, and beautifully written."
—Piers Paul Read, author of Alive

"This extraordinary book, a sort of wild combination of Kafka and The Catcher in the Rye, whirls with its catatonically dysfunctional hero into a maelstrom of violence and danger to learn from oppressed strangers what really matters in a human life, and to face the most terrlã'