A stunning, urgent, and original novel from Ben Lerner (The Topeka School and Leaving the Atocha Station) about making art, love, and children during the twilight of an empire.
**Winner of The Paris Review's 2012 Terry Southern Prize
A Finalist for the 2014 Folio Prize and the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award**
In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unlikely literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal medical condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child. In a New York of increasingly frequent superstorms and social unrest, he must reckon with his own mortality and the prospect of fatherhood in a city that might soon be underwater.
A writer whose work Jonathan Franzen has called "hilarious . . . cracklingly intelligent . . . and original in every sentence," Lerner captures what it's like to be alive now when the difficulty of imagining a future is changing our relationship to both the present and the past.
Named One of the Best Books of the Year By: The New YorkerThe New York Times Book ReviewThe Wall Street JournalThe Village VoiceThe Boston Globe NPR Vanity FairThe Guardian (London) The L MagazineThe Times Literary Supplement (London) The Globe and Mail (Toronto) The Huffington PostGawkerFlavorwireSan Francisco ChronicleThe Kansas City StarThe Jewish Daily ForwardTin House