Emotionally truthful fiction, recounting the past as one charecter sees it, but you'll never know which charecter it is. In recounting their past experiences in High School, and online, and during the pandemic, with similarities to “The Things We Carried” and "Station Eleven" in style, and with each chapter showing the perspective of another person in a group, and in different groups and their own struggles with depression and anxiety throughout the pandemic, and then later in college, ending at the election of Trump to his second term and the main charecter escaping to Scotland for University. Concepts I want to highlight are forgiveness, the anxiety of Generation Z, and the overarching philosophy of post-irony that is more or less universal among Gen-Z regardless of politics (including those currently engaged in violence against the state in various regions across the world).
Read the stories of the "Anxiety Generation" from one of its most harrowing soldiers, a tale of systemic and personal abuse, alienation, and hyper-politicized life in the post-Trump and post-Brexit era of politics. Without a guide or world police, read a group of teenagers from different continents die, live, and thrive within the confines of the first half of the era of bad feelings.
From role-playing a military junta in the UK, to a socialist utopia in Peru, and a P&S led Federal EU state led by a charismatic frontman for libertarian socialism. The consequences for an adult are nought, to propelling you to local councils and organizing, the consequences for a teen could be as bad as suicidal ideation and being wrongly diagnosed and medicated for bipolar- possibly because of your queer and trans identity hiding the latent autism and adhd in your family, only revealed two years after you left the hospital for the last time.
This is the novel on crisis capitalism, but more importantly, it is a novel for existentialist, humanist, and hopeful Post-Modern Marxism, from the man who didn't coin "Radical Humanism" himself. But did largely coin "political inertia" except one other reference from the 1960s.
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If you pre-order the book, you will get exclusive access to the author on a zoom call before the launch party of the novel, and get signed holiday cards for the rest of your life! Alongside a signed copy of the novel.
