Hari Kunzru's timely novel for our insecure world
By Vanessa Francesca
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Scribner, $32.99
Before New York, Seattle and Portland had been designated anarchist zones where the military could be sent in to disperse peaceful protest, before the outgoing President used the debate to dog whistle to hate groups, and before Trumpian racism becomes a thing of the past, Hari Kunzru sought to highlight the danger with his novel
Red Pill.
Hari Kunzru's novel is a timely look at the world and the importance of human rights.
Credit:David Levenson
It is about a writer who gets a grant to study in Germany and comes to suspect that fascism might be on the rise again. It’s the story of how he hunts down information about this intuition and it’s also a kind of meditation on the extremity of our own times with the insoluble moral dilemmas caused by the quandaries that come with immigration, the horrors of resurgent racism, and the terrible question mark of Trump.