Synopses & Reviews
National Magazine Award finalist Christopher Howard's debut novel, Tea of Ulaanbaatar, tells the story of disaffected Peace Corps volunteer Warren, who flees life in late-capitalist America to find himself stationed in the post-Soviet industrial hell of urban Mongolia. As the American presence crumbles, Warren seeks escape in tsus, the mysterious "blood tea" that may be the final revenge of the defeated Khans—or that may be only a powerful hallucinogen operating on an uneasy mind—as a phantasmagoria of violence slowly envelops him.
With prose that combines Benjamin Kunkel's satiric bite, William Burroughss dark historical reimagining, and a lush literary beauty all his own, Christopher Howard in Tea of Ulaanbaatar unfolds a story of expatriate angst, the dark side of globalization, and middle-class nightmares—and announces himself as one of the most inventive and ambitious of the new generation of American novelists.
Review
"With
Tea of Ulaanbataar,
Chris Howard takes to a rarely seen corner of the world, and then takes us further, into a spooky, trippy, gritty realm that is entirely his own."—
Eli Horowitz,
McSweeney’sSynopsis
Christopher Howard’s lushly literary debut novel: a story about the Peace Corps, Mongol hordes, hallucinogenic tea, and American nightmares.
About the Author
CHRISTOPHER HOWARD lives in the United States. His story "How To Make Millions in the Oil Market" was a finalist for the National Magazine Award, and his story "Darkstar" was one of two fiction pieces selected to launch Amazon's Kindle Singles program in 2011. Tea of Ulaanbaatar is his first novel.