Turn of the Century: A Novel

“A big, sprawling book . . . [Kurt Andersen has] infused it with so much inventive imagination. . . . Should be put in a Manhattan time capsule with the note: ‘This is how we lived at the turn of the century.’ ”—The New York Times Book Review

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

In his brash, brilliant first novel, New York Times bestselling author Kurt Andersen casts a penetrating eye on our giddy, media-obsessed era. With a keen sense of irony and a storyteller’s grace, he weaves a tale that is at once a biting satire and a wickedly incisive portrait of marriage, family, love, and friendship.

The millennium is here. BarbieWorld has opened in Las Vegas. Charles Manson’s parole hearing is on live TV. And George and Lizzie are a Manhattan power couple with three kids in private school and take-out from Hiroshima Boy waiting at the door. Lizzie owns a software start-up. George is a TV producer. With cell phones tickling their thighs and gossip buzzing in their ears, their future couldn’t be brighter. Until, that is, Lizzie cuts a deal with George’s boss and gets an office twenty-one floors above her husband’s. Until all the glitter and the hype threaten to destroy George’s and Lizzie’s sanity and their marriage. Until the only thing that can save them is a little understanding—at a time when everyone is talking but no one hears a thing.

“Savagely subversive . . . a smart, funny and excruciatingly deft portrait of our age.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Inspired . . . astonishing . . . very funny.”—Entertainment Weekly

“A big, Tom Wolfe–ish New York comic novel . . . on the last breath of the century.”—Elle