Rasputin Swims the Potomac
A Novel
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- $329.00
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- $329.00
Descripción editorial
ONE OF LITHUB'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2026 • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF SUMMER BY THE L.A. TIMES & KIRKUS
"A comic masterpiece. The current administration is finally getting the book it deserves."—Kirkus (Starred Review)
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk comes a biting satire of American politics and a searingly intelligent novel about the cruel absurdities of contemporary life, centering on a world champion professional wrestler with presidential ambitions
Reporter Clarence Thomas Jr. is looking for a great story, former country music teen star Faith Spack has parlayed her fame into a job at the White House, and the two-term incumbent president is campaigning for a constitutionally dubious third term.
After an outbreak at a campaign rally, a mysterious new pandemic of “weeping sickness” sweeps the nation, threatening the president’s hold on the Oval Office. Desperate to retain power, he enlists the mystical pro wrestler Rasputin to help ensure his reelection and guarantee additional seasons of his presidential reality TV show, The Real West Wing.
But as Rasputin’s appeal threatens to exceed the president’s, and the wrestler’s supposedly supernatural powers start to seem like the real thing, the campaign finds itself trapped in a spandex-clad destiny no number of executive orders can control, one in which both Clarence and Faith are compelled to play increasingly large parts.
Hilarious, compelling, and tragically relevant, Rasputin Swims the Potomac is both an escape and a warning, a scathing satire that explores the twists and turns of American democracy as it hurtles toward authoritarianism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the near future of this brilliant satire from Fountain (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk), the U.S. economy tanks, Russia continues its "soft" invasion across Europe, Twitter has been bought by the Sonic burger chain, White House dealings are broadcast on a reality TV show titled The Real West Wing, and the Supreme Court has cleared the president to run for a third term. The only thing standing in the way of the incumbent, who evokes Trump but whose name is redacted, is a spontaneous "weeping sickness" keeping people indoors. To buoy the president's chances, his campaign taps professional wrestler Rasputin for vice president. ("In a world full of bullshit," White House aide Faith Spack knows, "people crave something real.") After the charismatic Rasputin steals the attention of the president's base and the first lady, journalist Clarence Thomas Jr. (no relation) and Faith race to uncover the "fake Russian's" true intent. More than a laugh riot, this offers an unflinching view at the bottomless depths opened by a president "whose ego has wormholes Freud never dreamt of." It's a mordant and chilling portrait of a national hellscape.
