Undone by Colapinto, John

Things have not been going well for Dez. He’s broke, jobless, angry and without a future. Then he happens to see an episode of “Tovah in the Afternoon” featuring the fabulously successful memoirist Jasper Ulrickson.

A masterful satire, this novel hinges on celebrity envy - and the anarchic imperatives of desire. Dez, determined to bring Jasper down to his own level, devises a diabolical scheme to ruin Jasper’s reputation and seize his fortune. He uses a novel weapon: forbidden Eros. What ensues is a descent into psychological nightmare, one lit with dark flashes of humor and illuminating tragedy. Like watching Othello fall to Iago’s masterful manipulations, we are riveted by Dez’s cruel trick, this coldly calculated attempt to destroy another human being - this spectacle of an upright man brought low by envy and the implacable demands of desire.

A risk-taking and courageous novel unsparing in its dissection of the erotic impulse, An Upright Man speaks to our era’s corrosive fascination with the cult of celebrity, money and the compulsion to get ahead at all costs.