Apartment

A New York Times Editors Choice
Longlisted for the 2020 Simpson / Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize
One of Vogue.comΓÇÖs ΓÇ£Best Books of 2020 So FarΓÇ¥
One of ElleΓÇÖs ΓÇ£Best Books of 2020 So FarΓÇ¥

Named A Most-Anticipated Book by The New York Times, Vogue, The Boston Globe, Salon,
The Millions, Inside Hook, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn

In 1996, the unnamed narrator of Teddy WayneΓÇÖs Apartment is attending the MFA writing program at Columbia on his fatherΓÇÖs dime and living in an illegal sublet of a rent-stabilized apartment. Feeling guilty about his good fortune, he offers his spare bedroom--rent-free--to Billy, a talented, charismatic classmate from the Midwest eking out a hand-to-mouth existence in Manhattan.

The narratorΓÇÖs rapport with Billy develops into the friendship heΓÇÖs never had due to a lifetime of holding people at armΓÇÖs length, hovering at the periphery, feeling ΓÇ£fundamentally defective.ΓÇ¥ But their living arrangement, not to mention their radically different upbringings, breeds tensions neither man could predict. Interrogating the origins of our contemporary political divide and its ties to masculinity and class, Apartment is a gutting portrait of one of New YorkΓÇÖs many lost, disconnected souls by a writer with an uncommon aptitude for embodying them.