Alan Clay, the hero of Dave Eggers’ sad, funny, and very moving novel, is a 54 year old corporate survivor on a mission to Saudi Arabia to make a pitch to King Abdullah in order to secure a contract to provide the IT for the under-construction King Abdullah Economic City. As each day goes by and the king fails to appear, Alan and his team languish in their seaside tent waiting. A Hologram for the King (McSweeney’s, $25) is a character-driven story of a man in crisis, deeply in debt and unable to pay his daughter’s college tuition. It’s also a serious meditation on the decline of American power, economic and political. It’s a thought-provoking novel but also a hugely entertaining one. It’s already received a well-deserved New York Times rave review and promises to be one of the most talked about books of the summer.
We have a limited number of signed first editions.
