Keeping Bedlam at Bay the Prague Cafe: A Novel

, the author of (New Europe Books), is a graduate of Bennington College and a Chicago native who currently lives in Budapest, Hungary. "An ode to expatriate living, culture clashes, and the heady days of early 1990s Europe, this novel is a manic, wild ride.... [D]arkly comic ... immersive, nostalgic, and thoroughly enjoyable." — "With fresh and evocative language, Ellis delivers us into a frenetic and history-haunted world. By turns strange and subtle, imaginative and knowing—and also often very funny—this assured and original debut novel is a must-read for anyone, like me, who ever daydreamed about expat life in 1990s Eastern Europe but didn't have the nerve to go for it." — "As the title suggests, disorder predominates in Ellis's debut novel set in Prague during the dizzying days of the early 1990s. John Shirting is a quirky and unbalanced former barista from Chicago with a pill habit who winds up in the newly capitalist city hawking a plan to establish a chain of mobster-themed coffee shops... . The picaresque absurdity will be familiar to fans of Thomas Pynchon, along with the low-grade paranoia and aggressively whimsical dialogue... . . Ellis vividly re-creates the atmosphere of a city in the throes of transformation as well as the American Quixotes who populate this new frontier." —