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At the bitter end of the 1960s, upon his return home from combat in the Vietnam War, twenty-two-year old Eugene Allen writes a novel called HYSTOPIA. It is set in a strangely destabilized historical moment, where President Kennedy is entering his third term in office, and a new federal agency maintains the mental health of returning soldiers by wiping their memories through drugs and therapy, while those beyond help roam at will, re-enacting the atrocities they have witnessed. Outlandish and tender, funny and violent, timely and historical, Hystopia is a wild, gonzo experience about the nature of trauma, homecoming, and the redemptive power of storytelling.

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"Hystopia is a thrilling novel - daring, immensely readable and also unexpectedly funny. David Means is that lucky (and brilliant) writer: a man in full possession of a vision." Richard Ford

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David Means´ books have been translated into eight languages and his fiction has appeared in numerous publications. Assorted Fire Events won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction and a National Book Critics Circle nomination. The Secret Goldfish was shortlisted for the Frank O´Connor International Short Story Prize. The Spot was a 2010 Notable Book by the New York Times and won an O. Henry Prize. Means lives in New York and teaches at Vassar College. Hystopia is his highly anticipated first novel., David Means is the author of A Quick Kiss of Redemption , Assorted Fire Events , and The Secret Goldfish . His work has appeared in The New Yorker , Harper´s , Zeotrope and Best American Short Stories . He lives in Nyack, New York, and teaches at Vassar College.

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