{"product_id":"the-zero-a-novel-isbn-9780060898656","title":"The Zero: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNational Book Award Finalist \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Political satire at its best: scathing, funny, dark. Grade: A.” \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e—\u003cem\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe breakout novel from the #1 \u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/em\u003e bestselling author of \u003cem\u003eBeautiful Ruins\u003c\/em\u003e, Jess Walter: In the wake of a devastating terrorist attack, one man struggles to make sense of his world, even as the world tries to make use of him\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBrian Remy has no idea how he got here. It’s been only five days since terrorists attacked his city, and Remy is experiencing gaps in his life—as if he were a stone being skipped across water. He has a self-inflicted gunshot wound that he doesn’t remember inflicting. His son wears a black armband and refuses to acknowledge that Remy is still alive. He seems to be going blind. He has a beautiful new girlfriend whose name he doesn’t know. And his old partner in the police department, who may well be the only person crazier than Remy, has just gotten his picture on a box of First Responder cereal.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd these are the good things in Brian Remy’s life. While smoke still hangs over the city, Remy is recruited by a mysterious government agency that is assigned to gather all of the paper that was scattered in the attacks. As he slowly begins to realize that he’s working for a shadowy intelligence operation, Remy stumbles across a dangerous plot, and with the world threatening to boil over in violence and betrayal, he realizes that he’s got to track down the most elusive target of them all—himself. And the only way to do that is to return to that place where everything started falling apart.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the tradition of Catch-22, The Manchurian Candidate, and the novels of Ian McEwan, comes this extraordinary story of searing humor and sublime horror, of blindness, bewilderment, and that achingly familiar feeling that the world has suddenly stopped making sense.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Zero\u003c\/em\u003e is a groundbreaking novel, a darkly comic snapshot of our times that is already being compared to the works of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom its opening pages—when hero cop Brian Remy wakes up to find he's shot himself in the head—novelist Jess Walter takes us on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of a devastating terrorist attack. As the smoke slowly clears, Remy finds that his memory is skipping, lurching between moments of lucidity and days when he doesn't seem to be living his own life at all. The landscape around him is at once fractured and oddly familiar: a world dominated by a Machiavellian mayor known as \"The Boss,\" and peopled by gawking celebrities, anguished policemen peddling First Responder cereal, and pink real estate divas hyping the spoils of tragedy. Remy himself has a new girlfriend he doesn't know, a son who pretends he's dead, and an unsettling new job chasing a trail of paper scraps for a shadowy intelligence agency known as the Department of Documentation. Whether that trail will lead Remy to an elusive terror cell—or send him circling back to himself—is only one of the questions posed by this provocative yet deeply human novel.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom a novelist of astounding talent, \u003cem\u003eThe Zero\u003c\/em\u003e is an extraordinary story of how our trials become our transgressions, of how we forgive ourselves and whether or not we should.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“This is political satire at its best: scathing, funny, dark. Grade: A.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An original page-turner… a nifty spin on the genre. This fine novel has a memorable cast of characters…” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePhiladelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A powerful fiction debut” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSeattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A deliriously mordant political satire…Walter’s Helleresque take on a traumatic time…carries off his dark and hilarious narrative with a grandly grotesque imagination.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A tense and compulsively readable roller-coaster ride fraught with psychological thrills, unanticipated dips and lurches, and existential truths. The novel frightened and fascinated me in equal measures. Walter has written a neo-noirish masterpiece.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWally Lamb, author of I know this Much is True\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Walter goes from strength to strength, establishing himself as the current master of fractured U.S. history with all of the surrealism and black humor necessary for such an undertaking. Kafka would have to laugh.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Perceptive, ingenious satire…fascinating and important” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Compelling, intelligent… Walter keeps the suspense at a high level to the very end.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Exceptional… trancends the mystery of crime and takes a courageous look at an even more profound mystery—the mystery of what it takes to continue living. Totally absorbing.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eUrsula Hegi\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A disquieting first novel… Walter applies the same incisive sensitivity to the victims, the stalker, and the city itself.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A home run off the first pitch… A tremendous debut, full of pace and tensoin and unexpected twists… head and shoulders above the pack.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLee Child\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Stunning… a splendid thriller, loaded with knuckle-whitening tension… First-rate writing.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eOregonian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Suspenseful, challenging and intelligently written… a first novel of considerable depth and insight.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDallas Morning News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Aa satire\/tragedy that Franz Kafka and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. might appreciate.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Refreshing… entertaining… for readers who appreciate wry precisions and expert timing.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJanet Maslin, New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Fresh and different—a gritty story of betrayal, and an extended riff on life, death, and politics. Walter is a literary talent writ large.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Admirably unpredictable… a story full of wonderful small surprises. Dispassionate amd compassionate by turns, and always engrossing. Walter’s best by far.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews (starred)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A mystery novel of profound death. Despite themselves, readers will question their own self-images and assess just how far they’ve really come from the scared high-school kid who wanted to be exactly like everyone else but somehow still unique. A haunting, deeply troubling novel.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Absorbing… Walter renders his blind land with a clear-eyed, compassionate vision.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Exquisitely written. . . . Like a paranoid Being There,\u003cem\u003e The Zero\u003c\/em\u003e is suspenseful, satisfying and unforgettable.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Galley Talk” Publishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A brilliant tour–de–force that’s as heartrending as it is harrowing…the breakout novel of a brave and talented young writer.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A ridiculously talented writer.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003cem\u003eThe Zero\u003c\/em\u003e could end up as the Catch-22 of 9\/11. …The book’s brilliant ironies, its deadpan truths, its insider smarts and its everyguy hero may lead even skeptical readers to forgive the irreverent point of view.… “Ground Zero (in cop talk, “the Zero”) is seen through the watery eyes of detective Brian Remy. A drunk with an estranged wife and teen son, Remy is assigned to a secret detail that investigates sensitive documents blown out of the World Trade Center….As Remy’s dark half violently cuts corners in the investigation, his twisted excesses will be interpreted, no doubt with self-righteous joy by some, as shorthand for Abu Ghraib or Gitmo. But \u003cem\u003eThe Zero\u003c\/em\u003e has far broader appeal than most mockery of the current administration. Comedy is funny when it’s true, and the ragged conspiracy theories of jesters from Michael Moore on down aren’t funny because they aren’t true. Mr. Walter’s comic exaggerations are, like those in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, true on some level. [And] Mr. Walter’s hard humor can be almost poetic… “Mr. Walter is among the first to diagram the tragedy-into-kitsch machine that many of us have stumbled across ourselves. [And] Remy’s exhausted confusion, his sense that the world has grown beyond his control or comprehension, distills what many Americans have felt for the past five years. Who hasn’t wondered whether the Remys that the U.S. sends out on bla\u003cem\u003eck operations could be stumbling into new rattlesnake dens? In the book’s most poignant scene, one that elevates The Zero\u003c\/em\u003e above mere satire to Kafkaesque parable, Remy seizes on a spell of clarity to hide out with his girlfriend, April, in San Francisco, the two of them adopting disguises as they try to escape his fellow operatives and start over. Who hasnt felt the urge to flee everything and leave 9\/11’s aftershocks to someone else—another generation, another country, any sucker willing to take them? - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKyle Smith, Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In\u003cem\u003e The Zero\u003c\/em\u003e, Walter has created a satire\/tragedy that Franz Kafka and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. might appreciate. . . . \u003cem\u003eThe Zero\u003c\/em\u003e is different, in part because Walter succeeds in creating what he calls ‘a 9\/12 novel.’” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Entertaining … refreshing … (with) wry precision and expert timing” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJanet Maslin, New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Moving and inspirational … excruciatingly breathless … utterly inventive. You just have to read it. Maybe if Aaron Copland had written the score for a film noir starring the Marx Brothers there would be some prototype for Walter’s fusion fiction, but he didn’t and there isn’t … F. Scott Fitzgerald constructed a pretty good fictional situation in Gatsby upon which to hang that final verdict about American social mobility, but Walter arguably concocts an even better one … an affecting testament to American faith in the common man.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMaureen Corrigan, Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Immensely entertaining ... [Walter’s] wry social commentary [has] a decidedly different set of twists.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDick Adler, Chicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Dazzling … and perfectly believable … a major leap forward … a book that speaks of intangibles like hope and redemption as authoritatively as it depicts gangsters, hookers and high-stakes poker games. It’s rich in robust characters and wry dialogue, with agile prose, a big heart and a finely tuned plot.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAdam Woog, Seattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44889128403173,"sku":"NP9780060898656","price":25.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780060898656.jpg?v=1730230575","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-zero-a-novel-isbn-9780060898656","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}