The Papaya King

"An eccentric outsider is baffled by contemporary Manhattan in this engrossing second novel ... another entrancing, deeply memorable offering from Pelzman." —Kirkus Reviews

"How could anyone who has ever spent time in Manhattan resist taking a peek at a book with this title? Happily, The Papaya King bears more than a passing resemblance to one of my favorite novels of all time, John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces ... I turned these pages fast ..." —Bethanne Patrick, Literary Hub

Bobby Walser's tragic childhood has left him a man frozen in time and mired in a world of his own making—one that has little in common with reality. Genteel and old-fashioned, his manners and habits are more suited to an aristocrat from a Chekhov play than to a young man on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Haunted by his failure to live up to the legacy of his great father, Walser's sense of ineffectuality is compounded when he suffers a series of deflating professional setbacks. He's baffled by the people around him, and his only solace is the hope of a romance—conducted via handwritten letters—with a mysterious woman who may not even exist.

As his despair with twenty-first century life reaches a breaking point, Walser bristles at a newly constructed sculpture that represents everything he loathes about these times. Realizing that he has more to care about—and fight for—outside himself, he marches toward a final showdown with this towering symbol of oppressive technology.