“A perfectly poised ontological-thriller-comedy-dystopian-allegorical-page-turner, yet with tenderly real characters in its chewy center, this turned out to be just the thing I was looking for.”―Jonathan Lethem
“Not many writers would take on Orwell, Ray Bradbury, the nature of truth, and the current administration all at a blow. Big shoes to fill–and they fit Ben H. Winters just fine. Golden State grabs notions of disinformation and literalism and brilliantly turns them on their head to see what falls from their pockets.”―James Sallis, author of Drive
“Golden State is a prescient, devastating commentary on humanity’s disintegrating attachment to reality and truth, expertly told through the prism of a police-procedural, dystopian nightmare. Winters has written a 1984 for the 21st century. Not just a thrilling book, but an important one.”―Blake Crouch, author of Dark Matter
“A skillful and swift-moving concoction . . . For those who like their dystopias with a dash of humor. No lie.”―Kirkus Reviews
“Thought-provoking, genre-bending . . . Winters seems to have a real affection for unusually compelling premises. . . . He certainly knows how to bring those premises to life in a way that keeps readers flipping pages. . . . What’s especially intriguing about the book is the way Winters dispenses information, dropping a hint here, a key sentence there, and letting us figure out what happened in the past that led to a society in which the punishment for telling a lie could be exile. . . . . Another fine novel from a writer whose imagination knows no bounds.”―Booklist
Winters has a knack for creating appealing detective fictions that skew reality in thought-provoking ways, producing a hybrid of the familiar and the uncanny. His Last Policeman Trilogy (2012-2014) took place in New Hampshire in the months preceding Earth’s collision with an asteroid. “Underground Airlines,” published in 2016, posited a United States in which the Civil War never took place and where slavery is still legal in four states. At their best, these novels approach the mind-expanding counterfactuals and dystopias created by Philip K. Dick, George Orwell and Michael Chabon. As you read them, you feel your perception of the world slipping and warping.” —Washington Post
Airlines and The Last Policeman. (May 2020)
