Synopses & Reviews
From the acclaimed author of The Biology of Luck comes a hilarious, Kafkaesque satire Arnold Brinkman is a shy and retiring botanist; he loves his plants more than his country. But when his refusal to stand for the national anthem at a baseball game causes a major media incident, he is thrown into a world of pushy patriots, preachers, and press. And it's not going to get any easier when he refuses to apologize. A hilarious bullet into the heart of modern America, this novel mixes the literary sensibilities of Jonathan Franzen with the raucous satire of D.B.C. Pierre, and was the recipient of the Dundee International Book Prize.
About the Author
Jacob M. Appel is the author of The Biology of Luck. His fiction has been published in more than 200 literary journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, the Gettysburg Review, the Missouri Review, StorySouth, and Virginia Quartery Review. He has won the New Millennium Writings contest four times, the Writer's Digest "grand prize" twice, and the William Faulkner-William Wisdom competition in both fiction and creative nonfiction. He has also won annual contests sponsored by Boston Review, Missouri Review, Arts & Letters, Bellingham Review, Briar Cliff Review, North American Review, Sycamore Review, and Washington Square. His work has been short listed for the O. Henry Award (2001), Best American Short Stories (2007, 2008), Best American Essays (2011, 2012), and received "special mention" for the Pushcart Prize in 2006, 2007, 2011, and 2013. He lives in New York City.