Basket of Deplorables Free online reading

Critics hailed Tom Rachman's smash debut and New York Times best seller, The Imperfectionists, as "spectacular" (New York Times), "superb" (The Plain Dealer), and "magnificent" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). Reviews for his second novel, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, were no less rapturous, with the New York Times calling it "ingenious".

Now, in the shadows of a seismic shift in American politics, comes his timely and hilarious new work. Basket of Deplorables takes an incisive and satirical look at the United States in the era of Trump data breaches, liberal self-righteousness, red-hat rancor, Starbucks macchiatos, Ultimate Fighting factories, and Internet sinkholes.

Written for Audible and featuring a shifting array of disparate voices, the five intricately linked stories take listeners from an Election Night party in Manhattan to a funeral populated by fake mourners in Lansing, Michigan, to an online date in an era when every email platform in the world has been hacked and, ultimately, to a reality where the impossible, the unthinkable, becomes all too real.

In Basket of Deplorables, Rachman has created an urgent and deeply satisfying work that will continue to cement his place among the great literary stylists and cultural observers of our time.

"Tom Rachman’s masterful collection provides an early literary look at Trump-era America…. These bang-up-to-the-minute stories feel like essential reading as we get to grips with a bizarre new era." (The Guardian)

"Rachman’s deft cultural references and his acute skewering of American culture make for uncomfortably precise satire. (The Atlantic)

"Hilariously funny and blackly despairing, often at the same time." (The Sydney Morning Herald)

"These five linked stories share the same deft characterization, buoyant wit and imaginative richness of Rachman’s lauded novels The Imperfectionists and The Rise and Fall of Great Powers." (The Evening Standard)