2 New Novels Imagine an American Split as Political Contempt Fuels Civil War Fantasies
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Aug 21
2 New Novels Imagine an American Split as Political Contempt Fuels Civil War Fantasies
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 21
Summary
Kurt Andersen’s “The Breakup,” published this week, and Emily St. John Mandel’s “Exit Party,” due in September, frame an American crackup not just as catastrophe but as a possible escape.
The essay argues those stories resonate because blue and red America are locked in years of mutual contempt, with no agreed measure of grievance and no workable path to either reconciliation or separation.
“The Breakup,” set largely in 2045, ties a couple’s separation to a national divorce, as right-wing territories form the Free American Republic and the protagonists split over whether disunion is liberation or loss.
The two books join a broader post-2010 canon of U.S. dissolution fiction, from “American War” to Alex Garland’s “Civil War,” reflecting how political deadlock is increasingly being processed through imagined breakup.