The Facades

"Equal parts George Saunders, Raymond Chandler and Ludwig Wittgenstein . . . an intelligent and beguiling book that shouldn't be missed." —Time Out New York

Set in the once-great Midwestern city of Trude—a treacherous maze of convoluted shopping malls, barricaded libraries, and elitist assisted-living homes—this novel follows a disconsolate legal clerk named Sven Norberg, who sets out to investigate his wife's disappearance. Written with boundless intelligence and razor-sharp wit, The Facades is a comic and existential mystery that unfolds at the urgent pace of a thriller.


"An un-put-downable mystery . . . brimming with entertaining dialogue and unique, well-wrought characters . . . Lundgren's debut is a fierce, funny examination of loss, set against one of the most creative worlds in recent memory, and it's not to be missed." —Publishers Weekly 


"Lundgren incorporates thoughtful details, unexpected word choices, and striking turns of phrase that linger with the reader long after the book has ended. He has a keen sense of the mental abstraction that accompanies loss and translates it to the page with devastating accuracy. Readers with discerning taste in fiction, especially fans of literary fiction laced with mystery, will love Lundgren's debut." —Booklist

"Fascinating, painfully funny, darkly surrealistic . . . The Facades is a fine first novel by a very promising young writer." —St. Louis Post-Dispatch