An American dream

A dark, feverish novel from one of the most provocative voices in postwar American literature, this book follows Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero turned television personality and aspiring politician, over the course of a single, tumultuous night in New York. After killing his wealthy wife in a violent confrontation, Rojack plunges into a surreal odyssey through the city’s underworld, confronting power, sex, ambition, and his own capacity for self-destruction. Blending noir intensity with psychological and philosophical inquiry, the novel explores masculinity, celebrity, politics, and the uneasy promise of the American Dream. Bold, unsettling, and stylistically charged, it offers a vivid example of its author’s ambition to capture the raw energies and moral ambiguities of American life in the 1960s.