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About the Book

About the Book

The Subprimes

A wickedly funny dystopian parody set in a financially apocalyptic future America, from the critically acclaimed author of TRIBURBIA.

In a future America that feels increasingly familiar, you are your credit score. Extreme wealth inequality has created a class of have-nothings: Subprimes. Their bad credit ratings make them unemployable. Jobless and without assets, they’ve walked out on mortgages, been foreclosed upon, or can no longer afford a fixed address. Fugitives who must keep moving to avoid arrest, they wander the globally warmed American wasteland searching for day labor and a place to park their battered SUVs for the night.

Karl Taro Greenfeld’s trenchant satire follows the fortunes of two families whose lives reflect this new dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-financially-fittest America. Desperate for work and food, a Subprime family has been forced to migrate east, hoping for a better life. They are soon joined in their odyssey by a writer and his family --- slightly better off, yet falling fast. Eventually, they discover a small settlement of Subprimes who have begun an agrarian utopia built on a foreclosed exurb. Soon, though, the little stability they have is threatened when their land is targeted by job creators for shale oil extraction.

But all is not lost. A hero emerges, a woman on a motorcycle --- suspiciously lacking a credit score --- who just may save the world.

In THE SUBPRIMES, Karl Taro Greenfeld turns his keen and unflinching eye to our country today --- and where we may be headed. The result is a novel for the 99 percent: a darkly funny comedy about paradise lost and found, the value of credit, economic policy, and the meaning of family.

The Subprimes
by Karl Taro Greenfield

  • Publication Date: May 3, 2016
  • Genres: Fiction
  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Harper Perennial
  • ISBN-10: 0062132431
  • ISBN-13: 9780062132437