2 A.M. in Little America (Paperback)
Staff Reviews
American refugee Ron Patterson fled the country as the U.S. descended into civil war. Kalfus doesn't expound upon the causes or the specifics of the conflict; rather, he boils it down to us versus them, which seems like what is ready to happen about a million times every year. No other nation wants America's castoffs, so Ron has to keep his head down and not draw attention to himself. It's a very uncomfortable turning of the tables, seeing our emigrants treated the way we treat the immigrants coming into our country. There is a very unfinished quality to the book that I loved. Nothing is overly detailed, Ron could be any American, and we are left wondering what becomes of him at the end. An interesting thought experiment that casts American exceptionalism in its true colors.
— Jason KennedyDescription
An Esquire "Best Book of Spring 2022"
A San Francisco Chronicle "Most Anticipated Novel of 2022"
A Literary Hub "Most Anticipated Book of 2022"
From "an important writer in every sense" (David Foster Wallace), a novel that imagines a future in which sweeping civil conflict has forced America's young people to flee its borders, into an unwelcoming world.
Nearly a decade later--after anti-migrant sentiment has put their whirlwind intimacy and asylum to an end--Ron is living in "Little America," an enclave of migrants in one of the few countries still willing to accept them. Here, among reminders of his past life, he again begins to feel that he may have found a home. Ron adopts a stray dog, observes his neighbors, and lands a repairman job that allows him to move through the city quietly. But this newfound security, too, is quickly jeopardized, as resurgent political divisions threaten the fabric of Little America. Tapped as an informant against the rise of militant gangs and contending with the appearance of a strangely familiar woman, Ron is suddenly on dangerous and uncertain ground.
Brimming with mystery, suspense, and Kalfus's distinctive comic irony, 2 A.M. in Little America poses several questions vital to the current moment: What happens when privilege is reversed? Who is watching and why? How do tribalized politics disrupt our ability to distinguish what is true and what is not? This is a story for our time--gripping, unsettling, prescient--by one of our most acclaimed novelists.
About the Author
Ken Kalfus is the author of 2 A.M. in Little America. He is also the author of three other novels--Equilateral; A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, a finalist for the National Book Award; and The Commissariat of Enlightenment--and the story collections Thirst and Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies, the latter a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the basis for the HBO film Pu-239. He lives in Philadelphia.
