A one-in-ten-billion natural disaster devastates Chicago. A Jewish comedian, his most devoted fan, and the city’s mayor must struggle to move forward while the world—quite literally—caves beneath their feet.
A sprawling work of meta-fiction, Mount Chicago follows the mapless mayor who wants to build Mount Chicago, a memorial to the disaster victims that is “as moving as Auschwitz” but “less depressing.” Mount Chicago is a story of Chicago-style politics and political correctness, stand-up comedy and Jewish identity, and the absurdist semantics of disaster. With his third novel, Adam Levin has created a monument to laughter, love, art, and resilience in an age of spectacular loss. Join him in conversation with author Amanda Dennis as they consider the contours of the sublime and the surreal, and the writing that surmounts fiction itself.
About the speakers:
Adam Levin is the author of the novels The Instructions, Bubblegum, and Mount Chicago, as well as the story collection, Hot Pink. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and Playboy. He has been a New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award winner, a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a National Jewish Book Award finalist. He lives in Chicago.
Amanda Dennis is the author of the novel, Her Here, and a non-fiction book about Samuel Beckett, Beckett and Embodiment. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and Guernica, among other places. She has held fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Columbia and Cambridge Universities, and UC Berkeley’s center for the humanities in Madrid. She lives in Paris, where she is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the American University of Paris.
