SO YOU WANNA RUN A COUNTRY?

In a disturbing future, unsuspecting competitors in a global reality show find themselves in over their heads.

After decades of intrusive technology, climate collapse, and autocratic crackdowns, homeless people have been rebranded “Thoroughfarians,” prisoners staff retail shops to work off their sentences, and hopelessly unqualified contestants compete to rule small nations on the reality TV show So You Wanna Run a Country? This season’s host country is Inner Azhuur, an idiosyncratic land “locked in the Middle Ages, isolated from the world, surrounded on three sides by its mortal enemy.” Selected to rule—after a suspiciously fortuitous audition—are Mooney, a Thoroughfarian drifter saddled with a statue of questionable provenance, and his recent acquaintance, Wendy, an algorithm hacker on the lam from defrauded financiers. The new regents’ initial wariness quickly transforms into derision at the strange locals’ archaic customs. But all is not as it seems in Inner Azhuur, and the two find themselves drawn in to sinister schemes beyond their wildest imagining. Holohan’s prose pops and crackles as he combines an outlandish yet convincing vision of a tech-dominated future reminiscent of William Gibson with the wry wit of Neil Gaiman, and the result proves exceedingly funny. When Mooney and Wendy first arrive in Inner Azhuur, dignitaries perform ceremonial introductions by striking themselves with dead fish. (“Behold the Carp of Acquaintanceship!”) Holohan’s silly dystopia, replete with ridiculous place names (“Newer York” and “Grander Central Station”) and winking acronyms (“Consumer-Responsive Unscripted Drama”), strikes an utterly enjoyable medium between Futurama and Infinite Jest.

A raucous, engrossing, unsettling whirlwind of a story that is as disarmingly novel as it is disturbingly familiar.