The Parade

By Dave Eggers

The Parade is a taut, suspenseful story of two foreigners’ role in a nation’s fragile peace.

An unnamed country is leaving the darkness of a decade at war, and to commemorate the armistice the government commissions a new road connecting two halves of the state. Two men, foreign contractors from the same company, are sent to finish the highway. While one is flighty and adventurous, wanting to experience the nightlife and people, the other wants only to do the work and go home. But both men must eventually face the absurdities of their positions, and the dire consequences of their presence. With echoes of J. M. Coetzee and Graham Greene, this timeless novel questions whether we can ever understand another nation’s war, and what role we have in forging anyone’s peace. 

“This is a tale for our time, an allegory about intervening in foreign lands without knowledge, and so a nightmare vision of our endless wars.” 
—Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco and Churchill and Orwell
 
“A parable of progress, as told by J.M. Coetzee to Philip K. Dick. ” 
—Richard Flanagan, author of Gould’s Book of Fish and The Narrow Road to the Deep North
 
“In The Parade, the anxiety grows with every page and every mile to reach an ending that turns everything upside down and sends us into the heart of darkness. A minimalistic, merciless novel. A powerful allegory and a painfully concrete contemporary story—Eggers is a true virtuoso of that synthesis.” 
—Georgi Gospodinov, author of The Physics of Sorrow

On sale March 19th, 2019, Penguin Random House

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