GAD’S BOOK follows an awkward, obsessive novelist with a carefully constructed life who unwittingly joins a seductive circle of charismatic activists, who may or may not be part of Antifa. Never able to write much, now each time he’s asked to describe his novel-in-progress, he offers an entirely different description than the one before—each one closer to the escalating events of his life, packed with the sexual misadventures and political violence he now finds himself entangled in. The novel draws on the hallucinatory sides of Roberto Bolaño and César Aira and marks the debut of a keen, incisive and very funny new voice. 

Originally from Las Vegas, Dylan Bassett has lived many lives: a pastor in Russia, a semi-professional soccer player in Brazil, a translator in Kazakhstan, a local Democratic campaign manager in Utah, and now a professor of literature near Philadelphia. Bassett has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD from the University of California-Santa Cruz.

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“One can’t get close to this book without getting into it, and no amount of verbiage is going to explain it. In one version, a writer, let’s call him Bassett, escapes into a bar. On the streets, rally after rally—prophets and protesters, butchers and shepherds, epileptics and therapists, saints and anarchists, all clash. The bartender asks, What’ll it be? Bassett says, Bread from detritus. Bartender says, This is a bar, not a bakery. Above, CNN drones on about global warming, internet capitalism, Twitter cancelation, robotic war, genderless sex, the impending future. Bassett asks, How do you belong in a world that’s ending? The bartender shrugs, As a matter of fact, I’m writing a novel all about it. Working title: Gad’s Book. Bassett says, I’m all ears. Draw me a vegan beer.” 

—Karen Tei Yamashita

“In Gad’s Book, Dylan Bassett brilliantly reminds us of what it’s like to be alive right now. The dread, the self-consciousness, the absurdity, the longing to be a part of something greater, the terror of being part of something greater. Sex, work, eating, talking to someone while checking your phone, walking down the street: when all of it feels like a horror movie and a comedy, both at once. Gad’s Book is a masochistic delight.”

—Micah Perks

“Gad’s Book is a haunting novel of violence, paranoia and delusion, of a splintering consciousness in a hellscape much like today—wildly inventive, desperate, deft, painfully funny, and in the end, nothing short of brilliant.”

—Elizabeth McKenzie

For review copies, contact jon@outpost19.com