A Hologram for the King

June 25, 2012
Eggers's first unabashedly fictional, original novel in some time nonetheless grounds itself as firmly in the real world as Zeitoun or What is the What. Businessman Alan Clay has reached middle age with experience in manufacturing and door-to-door salesmanship considered almost wholly anachronistic and in post-industrial America, "as intriguing... as an airplane built from mud." Deeply in debt and unable to continue paying for his daughter Kit to go to college, Alan finds himself in Saudi Arabia awaiting the arrival of "the Kingdom's" elusive monarch for a chance to pitch his employer, Reliant, as the information technology supplier for a massive new King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) development. In limbo, Alan writes letters to Kit that he'll never mail, frets about his health (he's discovered a growth on his neck), and wrestles with insecurity over his past personal and business failings. This conflation of Waiting for Godot and Save the Tiger is unsurprising, if sympathetic, in its portrait of a global economy with all the solidity of a sandcastle. Eggers strikes fresh and genuine notes, however, in Alan's burgeoning friendship with the young Saudi man, Yousef, assigned to be his driver. Both Eggers's fans and those previously resistant to his work will find a spare but moving elegy for the American century.

May 1, 2013

Eggers's (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; Zeitoun) latest presents a fable, a postmodern blend of Waiting for Godot and Death of a Salesman. This is the story of Alan Clay, an American salesman who has come to Saudi Arabia to pitch the services of the IT company for which he works. This pitch is to be made to Saudi's King Abdullah, and it is for this sovereign whom Alan waits. And waits. More than anything else, this novel is a story of impotence, both in Alan's personal and professional lives and the growing impotence of America as a global power. VERDICT Ably presented by Dion Graham (who has narrated other Eggers audiobooks), Hologram is especially recommended for those interested in 21st-century American storytelling. [The McSweeney's hc was a New York Times best seller.--Ed.]--Wendy Galgan, St. Francis Coll., Brooklyn

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