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A Novel
Atria Books
May 2025
On Sale: May 20, 2025
256 pages
ISBN: 1668020203
EAN: 9781668020203
Paperback
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Fiction Literary | Humor
“Darkly, deeply funny, and acclaimed abroad, this biting satire” (Booklist) follows an over-educated, under-employed man as he struggles to complete his novel and get his life together over the course of one scorching Swedish summer.
Convinced of his own moral and intellectual superiority, the nameless protagonist of this debut novel is also paralyzed by self-consciousness. Yet, inspired by Stephen King’s On Writing, he decides to dedicate four hours a day to work on his own novel over the course of one summer. Only, he must also balance his creative goals with a part-time government job and looking after his girlfriend’s possibly brain-damaged Pomeranian dog.
Too bad he’s uninspired by his job, almost kills the dog, and realizes his novel is slowly morphing into misguided fan fiction about French writer and enfant terrible Michel Houellebecq.
Even when he’s alone, he can’t help but pontificate before an imagined audience, making over-the-top cases for and against all manner of culture war battles and obsessing over identity politics. He’s an emblem of all the follies of our age—happily unaware that in his refusal to be ordinary, he’s become a walking cliché of misguided manhood. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a portrait of a person belatedly coming of age, a blistering takedown of a privileged man who believes he’s a revolutionary, and “a crackling firework display of comic brilliance” (Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden). Translated by Alex Fleming.
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