The Late Americans (Penguin LCC US)

The author of the Booker Prize finalist Real Life and the bestselling Filthy Animals returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women at a crossroads In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. At the group s center are Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicates her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who didn t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection. These three are buffeted by a cast of poets, artists, landlords, meat-packing workers, and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms, and food-service kitchens of Iowa City, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.A novel of intimacy and precarity, friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans is Brandon Taylor s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life.