A stunning, urgent, and original novel from Ben Lerner (
The Topeka School
and
Leaving the Atocha Station
) about making art, love, and children during the twilight of an empire.
Winner of
The Paris Review
's 2012 Terry Southern Prize
A Finalist for the 2014 Folio Prize and the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award
In the last year, the narrator of
10:04
has enjoyed unlikely literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal medical condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child. In a New York of increasingly frequent superstorms and social unrest, he must reckon with his own mortality and the prospect of fatherhood in a city that might soon be underwater.
A writer whose work Jonathan Franzen has called "hilarious . . . cracklingly intelligent . . . and original in every sentence," Lerner captures what it's like to be alive now when the difficulty of imagining a future is changing our relationship to both the present and the past.
Named One of the Best Books of the Year By:
The New Yorker
The New York Times Book Review
The Wall Street Journal
The Village Voice
The Boston Globe
NPR
Vanity Fair
The Guardian
(London)
The L Magazine
The Times Literary Supplement
The Globe and Mail
(Toronto)
The Huffington Post
Gawker
Flavorwire
San Francisco Chronicle
The Kansas City Star
The Jewish Daily Forward
Tin House