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Named a most-anticipated book of 2022
by Esquire, Lit Hub, Publishers Lunch, Chicago Review of Books, InsideHook
An Amazon Editors’ Pick
“Paul, the protagonist of Teddy Wayne’s new novel, The Great Man Theory, is an aggrieved Everyman who finds contemporary life unsatisfying….I loved him immediately…Wayne turns the smug woundedness of the contemporary liberal into an amusing social comedy that is, at its finest, a worthy successor to those seriocomic novels of Bellow…He captures both the pitiful and the amusing and the painfully poignant nature of this transformation, how it can hollow out a person.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A sharp, funny novel…a kind of update of Kurt Vonnegut…Wayne is an inheritor, too, of Vonnegut’s style—winkingly funny, brisk, broadly satirical…Wayne wants to get well-intentioned bookish types—people who read novels—to look in the mirror. For them, elevated, cogent truth just might work.”—The Los Angeles Times
“Wise and grimly funny, Wayne’s dyspeptic satire of the Trump years paints a vivid portrait of male misery.”—Esquire
“A picture of the world as we know it, from the point of view of a funny, aggravating man, The Great Man Theory is an original and discomfiting portrait of the individual in the collective, as he tries to make his mark.”—Lit Hub
“A wickedly insightful novel about modern America.”—The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Wayne is a bard of male failure, insecurity, and resentment…a gifted writer with a talent for deft sketching…a canny mimic of the dialogue of the liberal chattering classes…The novel’s plotting is tight, meticulous…The reader bounces between the brisk chapters.”—Washington Examiner
“A compelling portrait of a man driven to the brink in a culture that he understands both all too well and not at all…produce[s] both winces and laughter…Part character study, part social satire, The Great Man Theory is fully a document of our troubled times.”—Bookreporter
“A sharp, bitter critique of our culture wars, technological dependency, and general intellectual malaise.”—Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“An exquisite balancing act between the farcical and the devastatingly sad.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Teddy Wayne creates an unforgettable character: an aggrieved curmudgeon who, fed up with current politics and culture, implements a wildly dramatic plan to be heard and set things right.”—Publishers Weekly
“The best summer 2022 novel…incredible hijinks of cringe-worthy humor…a page-turner…The ending is heart-pounding and fascinating…will probably make you think differently about how you feel about, well, everything.”—Fatherly
“An engrossing political novel but not in the usual sense… it asks a crucial question: What is an individual’s responsibility to make the world better?…perfectly tuned…compelling.”—New York Journal of Books