"A wastoid playboy gets sucked into a funny and paranoid near-future misadventure in Konstantinou's entertaining debut. In the near future — the 2000s are vintage but not forgotten — the Internet has evolved into the mediasphere, which allows lives to be followed so closely that names are traded like stocks on a Reputations Exchange. Eliot Vanderthorpe Jr. is a longtime screwup, the high-profile party-animal son of Eliot Sr., who runs the company behind the mediasphere. After Eliot Sr. takes his son's name public as a way to control his erratic behavior, the younger Eliot hooks up with a branding expert who attempts to drive up his IPO. Soon enough, Eliot discovers another Eliot living in the off-limits Occupied Zone of Northern California. Things get very crazy very quickly once Eliot sets out to confront his doppelgnger, and the conspiracy he uncovers has a very long, twisted reach. This playful and witty novel takes our celebrity-obsessed and media-hijacked culture, mixes in geopolitics and a dash of cyberpunk dystopia to create an intelligent and blistering what-if."Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"One hell of a satire, one hell of a world." Roger Rosenblatt, bestselling author of Beet and Lapham Rising

"Konstantinou's dazzling debut generates laughs while deliciously skewering today's hyperkinetic media, religious zealotry, and international politics. One of the most mordantly funny satires of the new millennium." Booklist

The United States and its Freedom Coalition allies are conducting serial invasions across the globe, including an attack on the anti-capitalist rebels of Northern California. The Middle East — now a single consumerist Caliphate led by Lebanese pop singer Caliph Fred — is in an uproar after an attack on the al-Aqsa Mosque gets televised on the Holy Land Channel.

The world is on the brink of a total radioactive, no-survivors war, and human-kind's last hope is Eliot R. Vanderthorpe, Jr., celebrity heir, debauched party animal, and Elvis impersonation scholar. But Eliot's got his own problems. His evangelical dad is breeding red heifers in anticipation of the Rapture. Eliot's dissertation is in the toilet. And he has a doppelganger. An evil doppelganger.

A fresh and intelligent debut that imagines the world of 2029, where many of the crises faced today — from celebrity mania to reckless foreign policy and ubiquitous government surveillance — have escalated to ridiculous new heights.

Lee Konstantinou fled the corporate world to join a doctoral program in the English department at Stanford University. Born in New York City, he now lives in San Francisco.