“The Parade” by Dave Eggers

May 27, 2019

“The Parade” by Dave Eggers

The Parade by Dave Eggers

The Parade was the spring 2019 LARB Book Club pick. To join the Book Club, where we put you in conversation with editors and members and send a copy of the selected title to your door, become a LARB Friend member today.

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“Eggers has been writing fiction that tells a story of America in our present moment, and often that moment is characterized by decline… To environmental devastation, violence, the power of social media, the loss of the middle class, we can now add American abroad, over their heads… Darkly funny.” Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times

“Dave Eggers is able to see the world as it is, while also holding on to his vision of how the world should be.” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

From the bestselling author of The Circle, A Hologram for the King, and What Is the What comes a taut, suspenseful story of two visitors’ role in a nation’s fragile peace. An unnamed country is leaving the darkness of decades at war, and to commemorate the armistice the government commissions a new road connecting two halves of the state. Two men, foreign contractors, are sent to finish the highway. While one is flighty and incautious, the other — nicknamed the Clock — wants only to do the work and go home. In this timeless parable, both men must eventually face the absurdities of their positions, and the dire consequences of their presence.

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DAVE EGGERS is the author of twelve books, including The Monk of Mokha; The Circle; Heroes of the Frontier; A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award; and What Is the What, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of France’s Prix Médicis Etranger. He is the founder of McSweeney’s and the cofounder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing center that has inspired similar programs around the world, and of ScholarMatch, which connects donors with students to make college accessible. He is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and is the cofounder of Voice of Witness, a book series that illuminates human rights crises through oral history. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into forty-two languages.

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To view all Book Club picks, please visit the LARB Book Club page.

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