About this item
In a starred Kirkus review, American Neolithic was called "a towering work of speculative fiction that will have readers rethinking what it means to be human." kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/terence-hawkins/american-neolithic/ America is a Police State Lite. Drones patrol the skies. The Patriot Amendments have gutted civil liberties. The Homeland Police and Patriot Tribunal have exclusive jurisdiction over all legal actions implicating national security. Enter Blingbling, the last literate member of the sole surviving band of Neanderthals, sent into the world to earn money for his people, who live in hiding on Manhattan's Lower East Side. After he is implicated in a hip-hop murder, shadowy benefactors retain a lawyer, the hard-boiled Raleigh.
About the Author
Terence Hawkins' second novel, American Neolithic, was named a Kirkus Reviews Best of 2014. In a starred review, it was called "a towering work of speculative fiction." His first book, The Rage of Achilles, is a novelization of the Iliad in modern, graphic prose. Tom Perrotta called it "a genuinely fresh take on a classic text;" Richard Selzer, "masterful." Hawkins was the founding Director of the Yale Writers' Conference, which he ran from 2011 to 2015. In 2014, he started the Company of Writers, which offers workshops and manuscript services to writers at all levels of experience. The Company recently hosted seminars with Amy Bloom and Colum McCann, and in April offers a program at the intersection of literary and genre fiction with John Crowley and Louis Bayard.Hawkins grew up in a small town in southwestern Pennsylvania. His home county, which the state police call Fayette Nam, is the setting for Philipp Meyer's American Rust and the original Night of the Living Dead. His grandfathers and several uncles were coal miners. He graduated from Yale, where he was publisher of the Yale Daily News. He attended the University of Wisconsin Law School and returned to New Haven in 1985 to practice as a trial lawyer. He now writes and teaches full time.
