Rasputin Swims the Potomac
Ben Fountain
Available as Paperback, eBook
From the critically acclaimed author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk comes a novel that is stranger than real life, but only just; a triumphant and terrifyingly relevant satire of modern-day American politics
IN A WORLD THAT’S LIKE OURS BUT EVEN STRANGER …
A TV star president is campaigning for a constitutionally dubious third term, normal Americans are falling into an unexplained weeping sickness and a wrestler claiming to be the reincarnated mystic Rasputin is making a spandex-clad entrance into politics.
Meanwhile Clarence Thomas Jr. is a journalist just trying to make sense of his country as it unmoors from reality. But with violence and bullshit erupting everywhere, things seem to be approaching collapse. Or maybe it’s all building to a grand gesture: something political, romantic, religious, insane and quite possibly fatal.
From award-winning author Ben Fountain, Rasputin Swims the Potomac is outrageously funny, wildly imagined and razor-sharp satire. It asks: what could possibly grow out of what we have now, except for something even stranger, harder to grasp and more tumultuous? And will what comes next be better or, somehow, even worse?
“Fiction is truer than real life in Rasputin Swims the Potomac, an audacious, rip-roaring, and terrifying good time. Don’t read ABOUT this book - it will sound too crazy! Dive in and see for yourself … Ben Fountain is a prophet, comic genius and a master storyteller.”
Maria Semple, Author Of Where’d You Go, Bernadette And Go Gentle
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“Fountain turns this scathing satire to the most relevant story of our time: the twists and turns of American democracy as it hurtles toward authoritarianism”
lithub
“Fountain goes on to have about as much fun as you can have with the 26 letters of the alphabet … A comic masterpiece. The current administration is finally getting the book it deserves”
kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“If you, like me, remember busting a gut and cringing in horror (sometimes within the span of the same sentence) while reading Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Fountain’s astute satire of George W. Bush–era jingoism, then you’ll know how ready I am for his latest, in which a truth-averse U.S. president seeks a third term with the help of a mystical pro wrestler named Rasputin. If anyone can capture the stupefying stupidity of today’s politics, Fountain can”
David Adams, Reviews Director
publisher’s Weekly Summer Picks
“Timely and terrifying, Fountain’s version of the current and potentially future state of American politics and culture is simultaneously wild and absurd yet eerily plausible”
Carol Haggas
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Ben Fountain
Ben Fountain’s work has received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book award and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. HIs fiction has been published in Esquire, Harper’s, The Paris Review and Zoetrope: All-Story, and his non-fiction has appeared in the Guardian and the New York Times, among other publications. He lives in North Carolina.
benfountain.com