The Happiest People in the World

" A] dark and funny satire . . . Infidelities, secret identities and double-crosses . . . Reflects the absurdity of any country obsessed with spying on its own people." --The Wall Street Journal

Take the format of a spy thriller, shape it around real-life incidents involving international terrorism, leaven it with dark, dry humor, toss in a love rectangle, give everybody a gun, and let everything play out in the outer reaches of upstate New York--there you have an idea of Brock Clarke's new novel. Filled with wonder and anger in almost equal parts, The Happiest People in the World is a ripped-from-the-headlines tale of paranoia and the all-American obsession with security and the conspiracies that threaten it.

"A literary first: a book that feels like the love child of Saul Bellow and Hogan's Heroes, full of authorial cartwheels of comedy and profundity." --GQ

"The Happiest People in the World begins with a raucous bar scene featuring party streamers, smoke, prone bodies, spilled fluids and a stuffed moose with a surveillance camera in its left eye . . . Clarke has] success in dreaming up oddball originals that have instant appeal." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times

" Clarke] creates books that taste like delicious cuts of absurdity marbled with erudition." --The Washington Post

"A whiz-bang spy satire bundled in an edgy tale of redemption . . . His comedy of errors is impossible to put down." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A darkly hilarious novel . . . The writing is clever, the dialogue snappy and understated, and the effect is as pleasantly unsettling as anything Kurt Vonnegut Jr. ever wrote." --The Portland Sun

"A zany and fast-paced book that explores the myriad ways people of all nations make themselves and others unhappy." --Chicago Tribune, Printer's Row

"Ranks among the funniest and most relevant social satires I've read . . . It might just make you the happiest reader in the world." --The Dallas Morning News