The Happiest People in the World: A Novel

**"\[A\] 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*