Radicals A Novel

An intimate, suspenseful, and provocative portrait of friendship and love at its limits, and a timely exploration of class tensions and corporate excess in America

When Eli first meets Sam Westergard, he is dazzled by his new friend’s charisma, energy, and determined passion. Both graduate students in New York City, the two young men bond over their idealism, their love of poetry, and their commitment to socialism, both in theory and in practice — this last taking the form of an organized protest against Soline, a giant energy company that has speculated away the jobs and savings of thousands. As an Occupy-like group begins to coalesce around him, Eli realizes that some of his fellow intellectuals are more deeply — and dangerously — devoted to the cause than others.

A fiercely intelligent, wonderfully human illustration of friendship, empathy, and suspicion in the midst of political upheaval, Ryan McIlvain’s new novel confirms him as one of our most talented and distinctive writers at work today.

"Among his many talents, Ryan McIlvain has a special gift for getting at the seductions and dangers of naïvete, and The Radicals delivers. Suffused with bittersweet wistfulness for a better world, this novel offers an urgent warning about the hazards that lie beneath even the best of intentions." Maggie Shipstead

"It may be fictional, but the world in The Radicals deftly mirrors ours, with political upheaval, corporate excess and suspicious, frustrated citizens." Tampa Bay Times

"A rollicking literary thriller...Rapturous." Vanity Fair

"In McIlvain’s splendid second novel (following Elders), the blissful rootlessness of narrator Eli, a 28-year-old graduate student, makes the novel a kind of adventure story of friendship and betrayal, in the same vein as On the Road....McIlvain’s prose is effortless and sharply perceptive; this is a consistently engrossing and thoroughly enjoyable novel." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

An intimate, suspenseful, and provocative portrait of friendship and love at its limits, and a timely exploration of class tensions and corporate excess in America

When Eli first meets Sam Westergard, he is dazzled by his new friend’s charisma, energy, and determined passion. Both graduate students in New York City, the two young men bond over their idealism, their love of poetry, and their commitment to socialism, both in theory and in practice — this last taking the form of an organized protest against Soline, a giant energy company that has speculated away the jobs and savings of thousands. As an Occupy-like group begins to coalesce around him, Eli realizes that some of his fellow intellectuals are more deeply — and dangerously — devoted to the cause than others.

A fiercely intelligent, wonderfully human illustration of friendship, empathy, and suspicion in the midst of political upheaval, Ryan McIlvain’s new novel confirms him as one of our most talented and distinctive writers at work today.

Ryan McIlvain was born in Utah and raised in Massachusetts. His first novel, Elders, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and his work has appeared in The Paris Review, Post Road, The Rumpus, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among many other publications. A former Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University, McIlvain now lives with his family in Tampa, Florida.