Muck

Book excerpt: “An absurdist blending of ancient and contemporary details . . . in the kvetching style of Joseph Heller.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal In a Jerusalem both ancient and modern, where the First Temple squats over the populace like a Trump casino, where the streets are literally crawling with prophets and heathen helicopters buzz over Old Testament sovereigns, two young poets are about to have their lives turned upside down. Struggling Jeremiah is worried that he is wasting his time trying to be a writer; the great critic Broch just beat him over the head with his own computer keyboard. Mattaniah, on the other hand, is a real up-and-comer—but he has a secret he wouldn’t want anyone in the literary world to know: his late father was king of Judah. Then Jeremiah has a vision: that Jerusalem is doomed, and that Mattaniah will be forced to ascend to the throne only to witness his people slaughtered and exiled. But what does it mean to tell a friend and rival that his future is bleak? What sort of grudges and biases turn true vision into false prophecy? Can the very act of speaking a prediction aloud make it come true? And, if so, does that make you a seer, or just a schmuck? Dror Burstein’s Muck is a brilliant and subversive modern-dress retelling of the book of Jeremiah: a comedy with apocalyptic stakes by a star of Israeli fiction. “Influenced by such masterworks as Philip Roth’s scabrous Sabbath’s Theater, Joseph Heller’s satirical Catch-22, and the modernist works of Thomas Pynchon, [Muck] is alternately hilarious . . . and gripping.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review