In Russell Working’s satirical novel The Insurrectionist, Chicago Bullet newspaper editors renege on their promise to send reporter Ian Landquart to the Paris bureau. Instead, he is demoted to a suburban office. After quarreling with an editor, he is forced to spend his days redacting racist language from the historical archives. To salvage his career, he investigates an elephant-owning farmer who protested nonviolently on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. But as Ian gins up an FBI probe, he learns that his progressive teenage daughter is dating the farmer’s conservative, gun-owning son—ensnaring her in the case. With a Swiftian eye, Working mercilessly lampoons wokeness, modern journalism, and abusive prosecutions.
“[Working] has an amazing ability to draw the reader immediately into the world about which he is writing, whether it is the paper mills of the Pacific Northwest, where a former policeman is almost courting death, the Haiti of voodoo and the dread Tonton Macoutes, or the lazy hot summer afternoons of a group of young boys.” — The New York Times |
“[Resurrectionists] introduces a writer of unusual promise. Refusing the easy ironies and glassy surface of most contemporary fiction, Russell Working’s stories enact our uncertain and restless longing for freedom and transcendence—resurrection—against backgrounds and circumstances startling in their vivid actuality.” — Tobias Wolff, author of This Boy’s Life | “Reminiscent of the early Paul Bowles, with the same muscular use of language, the same ability to create a mood fraught with tension...” — Publishers Weekly