10:04: A Novel / Lerner, Ben

Named One of the Best Books of the Year By:
The New YorkerThe New York Times Book ReviewThe Wall Street JournalThe Village VoiceThe Boston Globe NPR Vanity FairThe Guardian (London) The L MagazineThe Times Literary Supplement (London) The Globe and Mail (Toronto) The Huffington PostGawkerFlavorwireSan Francisco ChronicleThe Kansas City StarThe Jewish Daily ForwardTin House

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.

In prose that Jonathan Franzen has called "hilarious ... cracklingly intelligent ... and original in every sentence," Lerner captures what it's like to be alive now, during the twilight of an empire, when the difficulty of imagining a future is changing our relationship to both the present and the past.