Big Machine - A Novel

A “haunting and fresh” (Los Angeles Times) novel about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us that “[draws] comparisons to the work of Ralph Ellison and Thomas Pynchon” (The Wall Street Journal)

“Big Machine is like nothing I’ve ever read, incredibly human and alien at the same time. Victor LaValle writes like Gabriel García Márquez mixed with Edgar Allan Poe.”—Mos Def

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly

Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God.

Infused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with Victor LaValle’s fiendish comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us.

Winner of the American Book Award and the Shirley Jackson Award