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A Hologram for the King

by Dave Eggers

Average based on 15 comments. Synopses & Reviews Customer Comments (15) ISBN13: 9781936365746 ISBN10: 193636574x All Product Details

 

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughters college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment — and a moving story of how we got here.

Review:

"Eggers's first unabashedly fictional, original novel in some time nonetheless grounds itself as firmly in the real world as Zeitoun or What is the What. Businessman Alan Clay has reached middle age with experience in manufacturing and door-to-door salesmanship considered almost wholly anachronistic and in post-industrial America, 'as intriguing... as an airplane built from mud.' Deeply in debt and unable to continue paying for his daughter Kit to go to college, Alan finds himself in Saudi Arabia awaiting the arrival of 'the Kingdom's' elusive monarch for a chance to pitch his employer, Reliant, as the information technology supplier for a massive new King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) development. In limbo, Alan writes letters to Kit that he'll never mail, frets about his health (he's discovered a growth on his neck), and wrestles with insecurity over his past personal and business failings. This conflation of Waiting for Godot and Save the Tiger is unsurprising, if sympathetic, in its portrait of a global economy with all the solidity of a sandcastle. Eggers strikes fresh and genuine notes, however, in Alan's burgeoning friendship with the young Saudi man, Yousef, assigned to be his driver. Both Eggers's fans and those previously resistant to his work will find a spare but moving elegy for the American century. (June)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review:

"Mr. Eggers uses a new, pared down, Hemingwayesque voice to recount his story...he demonstrates in Hologram that he is master of this more old-fashioned approach as much as he was a pioneering innovator with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius....[This] sad-funny-dreamlike story unfolds to become an allegory about the frustrations of middle-class America, about the woes unemployed workers and sidelined entrepreneurs have experienced in a newly globalized world in which jobs are being outsourced abroad....A comic but deeply affecting tale about one man's travails that also provides a bright, digital snapshot of our times." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Review:

"A spare but moving elegy for the American century." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"Eggers can do fiction as well as he likes." Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times

Review:

"A potent, well-drawn portrait of one man's discovery of where his personal and professional selves split and connect. [Eggers] masters the hurry-up-and-wait rhythm of Alan's visit....This book is firm proof that that social concerns can make for resonant storytelling." Kirkus

Review:

"An extraordinary work of timely and provocative themes....This novel reminds us that above all, Eggers is a writer of books, and a writer of the highest order....An outstanding achievement in Eggers's already impressive career, and an essential read." Carmela Ciuraru, The San Francisco Chronicle

Review:

"Eggers understands the pressures of American downward-mobility, and in the protagonist of his novel, Alan Clay, has created an Everyman, a post-modern Willy Loman....The novel operates on a grand and global scale, but it also is intimate." Elizabeth Taylor, The Chicago Tribune

Review:

"Fascinating....Although Godot may be Hologram's philosophical source, Eggers is no Beckettian minimalist. The novel is paradoxically suspenseful, but it's also rich in character and in Eggers's evocative writing about place....A Hologram for the King, as far from home as it might seem, is an acute slice of American life." Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times

Review:

"Dave Eggers is a prince among men when it comes to writing deeply felt, socially conscious books that meld reportage with fiction. While A Hologram for the King is fiction...it's a strike against the current state of global economic injustice." Elissa Schappell,Vanity Fair

Review:

"[A] supremely readable parable of America in the global economy that is haunting, beautifully shaped and sad....With ferocious energy and versatility, [Eggers] has been studying how the world is remaking America....Eggers has developed an exceptional gift for opening up the lives of others so as to offer the story of globalism as it develops and, simultaneously, to unfold a much more archetypal tale of struggle and loneliness and drift." Pico Iyer, The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Eggers's spare prose is a pleasure, and A Hologram for the King proves to be a deft blend of surreal adventure, absurd comedy and pointed observations." Georgia Rowe, San Jose Mercury News

Review:

"As the kingless days pass, Alan ventures from the tent and hotel into the rich, unsettling realities of the Kingdom, and Eggers ventures deeper into Alan, as well as into the question that has seemingly guided Eggers's work for years: What does it mean to be an American in a world that has places like the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, or post-Katrina New Orleans?" Alan Scherstuhl, San Francisco Weekly

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About the Author

Dave Eggers is the bestselling author of Zeitoun, winner of the American Book Award and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His novel What Is the What was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won France's Prix Medicis.

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 15 comments:

---

c_calanca, January 6, 2013 (view all comments by c_calanca)
Eggers does it again, with an inspirational ability to capture the reader and not let go.

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Rpkalish, January 4, 2013 (view all comments by Rpkalish)
This book begins to clutch you, slowly at first and then quickly. You become totally immersed in what, at first, seems like a simple tale but is actually a profound comment on our world and the powers that influence it.

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PatrickB, January 3, 2013 (view all comments by PatrickB)
I read this in one day, mostly in a tent on a camping trip. a nice mix of delicious readability and thoughtful, provocative writing.

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View all 15 comments

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Product Details

ISBN:

9781936365746

Author:

Eggers, Dave

Publisher:

McSweeney's Books

Subject:

Literary

Subject:

Literature-A to Z

Copyright:

2012

Edition Description:

Trade Cloth

Publication Date:

20120631

Binding:

HARDCOVER

Language:

English

Pages:

328

Dimensions:

8.5 x 6 in

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A Hologram for the King New Hardcover Dave Eggers

0 stars - 0 reviews

$25.00 In Stock

Product details 328 pages McSweeney's Books - 2012-05-03 English 9781936365746 Reviews:

"Publishers Weekly Review" by Publishers Weekly, "Eggers's first unabashedly fictional, original novel in some time nonetheless grounds itself as firmly in the real world as Zeitoun or What is the What. Businessman Alan Clay has reached middle age with experience in manufacturing and door-to-door salesmanship considered almost wholly anachronistic and in post-industrial America, 'as intriguing... as an airplane built from mud.' Deeply in debt and unable to continue paying for his daughter Kit to go to college, Alan finds himself in Saudi Arabia awaiting the arrival of 'the Kingdom's' elusive monarch for a chance to pitch his employer, Reliant, as the information technology supplier for a massive new King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) development. In limbo, Alan writes letters to Kit that he'll never mail, frets about his health (he's discovered a growth on his neck), and wrestles with insecurity over his past personal and business failings. This conflation of Waiting for Godot and Save the Tiger is unsurprising, if sympathetic, in its portrait of a global economy with all the solidity of a sandcastle. Eggers strikes fresh and genuine notes, however, in Alan's burgeoning friendship with the young Saudi man, Yousef, assigned to be his driver. Both Eggers's fans and those previously resistant to his work will find a spare but moving elegy for the American century. (June)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

"Review" by Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times, "Mr. Eggers uses a new, pared down, Hemingwayesque voice to recount his story...he demonstrates in Hologram that he is master of this more old-fashioned approach as much as he was a pioneering innovator with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius....[This] sad-funny-dreamlike story unfolds to become an allegory about the frustrations of middle-class America, about the woes unemployed workers and sidelined entrepreneurs have experienced in a newly globalized world in which jobs are being outsourced abroad....A comic but deeply affecting tale about one man's travails that also provides a bright, digital snapshot of our times."

"Review" by Publishers Weekly, "A spare but moving elegy for the American century."

"Review" by Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times, "Eggers can do fiction as well as he likes."

"Review" by Kirkus, "A potent, well-drawn portrait of one man's discovery of where his personal and professional selves split and connect. [Eggers] masters the hurry-up-and-wait rhythm of Alan's visit....This book is firm proof that that social concerns can make for resonant storytelling."

"Review" by Carmela Ciuraru, The San Francisco Chronicle, "An extraordinary work of timely and provocative themes....This novel reminds us that above all, Eggers is a writer of books, and a writer of the highest order....An outstanding achievement in Eggers's already impressive career, and an essential read."

"Review" by Elizabeth Taylor, The Chicago Tribune, "Eggers understands the pressures of American downward-mobility, and in the protagonist of his novel, Alan Clay, has created an Everyman, a post-modern Willy Loman....The novel operates on a grand and global scale, but it also is intimate."

"Review" by Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times, "Fascinating....Although Godot may be Hologram's philosophical source, Eggers is no Beckettian minimalist. The novel is paradoxically suspenseful, but it's also rich in character and in Eggers's evocative writing about place....A Hologram for the King, as far from home as it might seem, is an acute slice of American life."

"Review" by Elissa Schappell,Vanity Fair, "Dave Eggers is a prince among men when it comes to writing deeply felt, socially conscious books that meld reportage with fiction. While A Hologram for the King is fiction...it's a strike against the current state of global economic injustice."

"Review" by Pico Iyer, The New York Times Book Review, "[A] supremely readable parable of America in the global economy that is haunting, beautifully shaped and sad....With ferocious energy and versatility, [Eggers] has been studying how the world is remaking America....Eggers has developed an exceptional gift for opening up the lives of others so as to offer the story of globalism as it develops and, simultaneously, to unfold a much more archetypal tale of struggle and loneliness and drift."

"Review" by Georgia Rowe, San Jose Mercury News, "Eggers's spare prose is a pleasure, and A Hologram for the King proves to be a deft blend of surreal adventure, absurd comedy and pointed observations."

"Review" by Alan Scherstuhl, San Francisco Weekly, "As the kingless days pass, Alan ventures from the tent and hotel into the rich, unsettling realities of the Kingdom, and Eggers ventures deeper into Alan, as well as into the question that has seemingly guided Eggers's work for years: What does it mean to be an American in a world that has places like the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, or post-Katrina New Orleans?"