Awards
2017 Whiting Award Winner
Staff Pick
The post-graduate pawns of Private Citizens are shunted, sullen, and variously inebriated around a NorCal game board checkered with ruinous intent: porn addiction, corporate seminars, sudden physical disfigurement. Tulathimutte tempers the proceedings with giddy-making reams of confectionery maximalism and garrulous patter, evading the solipsistic slog implied by the "millennial novel" tag. Sleek and pliable, brimming with dexterity. Recommended By Justin W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
From a brilliant new literary talent comes a sweeping comic portrait of privilege, ambition, and friendship in millennial San Francisco. With the social acuity of Adelle Waldman and the murderous wit of Martin Amis, Tony Tulathimuttes
Private Citizens is a brainy, irreverent debut—
This Side of Paradise for a new era.
Capturing the anxious, self-aware mood of young college grads in the aughts, Private Citizens embraces the contradictions of our new century: call it a loving satire. A gleefully rude comedy of manners. Middlemarch for Millennials. The novel's four whip-smart narrators—idealistic Cory, Internet-lurking Will, awkward Henrik, and vicious Linda—are torn between fixing the world and cannibalizing it. In boisterous prose that ricochets between humor and pain, the four estranged friends stagger through the Bay Areas maze of tech startups, protestors, gentrifiers, karaoke bars, house parties, and cultish self-help seminars, washing up in each others lives once again.
A wise and searching depiction of a generation grappling with privilege and finding grace in failure, Private Citizens is as expansively intelligent as it is full of heart.
Synopsis
PRIVATE CITIZENS was named a best book of the year by New York Magazine/Vulture, The New Yorker, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Nylon, Kirkus, Electric Literature and The Millions.
An Amazon Best Book of the Month in the Literature & Fiction Category
A Buzzfeed Most Exciting Book of 2016
A Flavorwire Most Anticipated Book of 2016
New York Magazine calls Private Citizens "the first great millennial novel."
Emma Cline calls it "brilliant."
From a brilliant new literary talent comes a sweeping comic portrait of privilege, ambition, and friendship in millennial San Francisco. With the social acuity of Adelle Waldman and the murderous wit of Martin Amis, Tony Tulathimutte s Private Citizens is a brainy, irreverent debut This Side of Paradise for a new era.
Capturing the anxious, self-aware mood of young college grads in the aughts, Private Citizensembraces the contradictions of our new century: call it a loving satire. A gleefully rude comedy of manners. Middlemarchfor Millennials. The novel's four whip-smart narrators idealistic Cory, Internet-lurking Will, awkward Henrik, and vicious Linda are torn between fixing the world and cannibalizing it. In boisterous prose that ricochets between humor and pain, the four estranged friendsstagger through the Bay Area s maze of tech startups, protestors, gentrifiers, karaoke bars, house parties, and cultish self-help seminars, washing up in each other s lives once again.
A wise and searching depiction of a generation grappling with privilege and finding grace in failure, Private Citizens is as expansively intelligent as it is full of heart.
"