“[ Pan ] has literary circles buzzing . . . Rendered in dazzling prose Clune’s debut novel
paints a luminous portrait of the unique psychosis that growing up in suburbia can foster.” ―
Bustle “I steal language and ideas from Michael Clune.” ―Ben Lerner Pulitzer Prize-nominated
author of The Topeka School A strange and brilliant teenager's first panic attacks lead him
down the rabbit hole in this wild highly anticipated debut novel from one of our most
distinctive literary minds Nicholas is fifteen when he forgets how to breathe. He had plenty
of reason to feel unstable already: He’s been living with his dad in the bleak Chicago suburbs
since his Russian-born mom kicked him out. Then one day in geometry class Nicholas suddenly
realizes that his hands are objects . The doctor says it’s just panic but Nicholas suspects
that his real problem might not be a psychiatric one: maybe the Greek god Pan is trapped inside
his body. As his paradigm for his own consciousness crumbles Nicholas his best friend Ty
and his maybe-girlfriend Sarah hunt for answers why—in Oscar Wilde and in Charles Baudelaire
in rock and roll and in Bach and in the mysterious drugged-out Barn where their classmate
Tod’s charismatic older brother Ian leads the high schoolers in rituals that might end up
breaking more than just the law. Thrilling cerebral and startlingly funny Pan is a new
masterpiece of the coming-of-age genre by Guggenheim fellow and literary scholar Michael Clune
whose memoir of heroin addiction White Out —named one of The New Yorker ’s best books of the
year—earned him a cult readership. Now in Pan the great novel of our age of anxiety Clune
drops us inside the human psyche where we risk discovering that the forces controlling our
inner lives could be more alien than we want to let ourselves believe.
