"I finished The Resisters in a day. I don't know how a book can be so devastating, and yet miraculously wonderful at the same time. I was completely captivated by the family whose story Jen tells. The world she creates—set in near-future AutoAmerica—is so believable an outcome of what we see around us that it feels as much prescient as imagined. A sort of cautionary tale, it's not only a book to love, it's a book that's important. I'm in awe."
Publisher Knopf
Publication Date 2020-02-04
Section New Hardcover - Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9780525657217
The time: not so long from now. The place: AutoAmerica. The land: half under water. The Internet: one part artificial intelligence, one part surveillance technology, and oddly human—even funny. The people: Divided. The angel-fair "Netted" have jobs, and literally occupy the high ground. The "Surplus" live on swampland if they're lucky, on water if they're not.
The story: to a Surplus couple—he once a professor, she still a lawyer—is born a Blasian girl with a golden arm. At two, Gwen is hurling her stuffed animals from the crib; by ten, she can hit whatever target she likes. Her teens find her happily playing in an underground baseball league.
When AutoAmerica rejoins the Olympics, though—with a special eye on beating ChinRussia—Gwen attracts interest. Soon she finds herself playing ball with the Netted even as her mother challenges the very foundations of this divided society.
A moving and important story of an America that seems ever more possible, The Resisters is also the story of one family struggling to maintain its humanity and normalcy in circumstances that threaten their every value—as well as their very existence.
Extraordinary and ordinary, charming and electrifying, this is Gish Jen at her most irresistible.
