The Great American Novel of the twenty-first century; winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and shortlisted for the inaugural Folio Prize.
Casi is a hotshot public defender working on the front line of America's War on Drugs. So far he's on the winning side. He's never lost a case. But nothing lasts forever, and pride like his has a long way to fall.
Funny, smart and always surprising, A NAKED SINGULARITY speaks a language all of its own and reads like nothing else ever written. Casi's beautiful mind and planetary intelligence make him an inimitable and unforgettable narrator.
In De La Pava's hands, the labyrinthine miseries of the New York Justice System are as layered and diabolical as Dante's nine circles of Hell. But the Devil doesn't hog the best lines. There are plenty here to go around.
Ambitious, affecting, intelligent, plangent, comic, kooky and impassioned. I've read a lot of novels this year, between judging the Man Booker prize and the Granta Best of Young British Novelists, and I've yearned for this kind of exuberant, precise fiction - Stuart Kelly, The Guardian
Like 'The Wire' written by Voltaire ... Unputdownable - Robert Collins, The Sunday Times
A great American novel: large, ambitious, and full of talk - Alex Good, Toronto Star
Sergio de la Pava is the author of the novels A Naked Singularity and Personae. A Naked Singularity won the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction in 2013 and was shortlisted for the inaugural Folio Prize in the UK, Personae received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly and extraordinary critical praise. De la Pava is an attorney in New York City where he represents indigent defendants and advocates for large-scale criminal justice reforms.