A Place Under the Sun

A Place Under the Sun is a visceral and sardonic novel about misplaced agonies and ambitions. Enrique Ureta, a Nabokovian Spanish young man, has moved to the Middle East to take a place under the sun of a well-paying, tier-1 management consulting firm. Introverted, immature, jumpy, distracted, judgmental – and naturally selfish and egotistic – his professional aspirations are thwarted by the increasing importance of acting out a confident, flashy persona. Impressions, no matter how hurried, carry weight. The firm even uses C.G. Jung’s inspired theses to classify its employees by personality types and it is the results-driven extroverts who shall prevail. The job is naturally intertwined with thoughts of wanting out, but its deranged lifestyle offers Enrique (aka Henry) a veil with which to cover troubled relationships and its pay a cushion to brace himself from his baby boomer parents, who are highly in debt and about to look to him for help.