The only American included in Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists,” Markovits sets his seventh novel in the post-financial crisis landscape of Detroit. It’s 2011 and a pair of Yale-educated thirty-somethings decide to revitalize the ailing city. Using Groupon as a model, they carve out New Jamestown and attract a population of upwardly-mobile hipsters—but also inflame Detroit’s socio-cultural tensions, setting off racial incidents and eventually turning against each other.
Markovits will be in conversation with Amy Sullivan, a contributing editor for Time magazine who covers religion and politics, and writes for the magazine's political blog, Swampland.
