Something New Under the Sun: A Novel

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE • A novelist discovers the dark side of Hollywood and reckons with ambition, corruption, and connectedness in the age of environmental collapse and ecological awakening-a darkly unsettling near-future novel for readers of Don DeLillo and Ottessa Moshfegh

ONE OF VULTURE'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • ONE OF SUMMER'S BEST BOOKS: The Wall Street Journal • Time • Parade • LitHub • Vanity Fair • Vogue • Refinery29 • Esquire

"A darkly satirical reflection of ecological reality."-Time
"Genius."-Los Angeles Times
"Wildly entertaining and beautifully written."-LitHub

East Coast novelist Patrick Hamlin has come to Hollywood with simple goals in mind: overseeing the production of a film adaptation of one of his books, preventing starlet Cassidy Carter's disruptive behavior from derailing said production, and turning this last-ditch effort at career resuscitation into the sort of success that will dazzle his wife and daughter back home. But California is not as he imagined: Drought, wildfire, and corporate corruption are omnipresent, and the company behind a mysterious new brand of synthetic water seems to be at the root of it all. Patrick partners with Cassidy-after having been her reluctant chauffeur for weeks-and the two of them investigate the sun-scorched city's darker crevices, where they discover that catastrophe resembles order until the last possible second.

In this often-witty and all-too-timely story, Alexandra Kleeman grapples with the corruption of our environment in the age of alternative facts. Something New Under the Sun is a meticulous and deeply felt accounting of our very human anxieties, liabilities, dependencies, and, ultimately, responsibility to truth.