Choke » (Reprint)

With a disturbing but mordantly funny body of work that began with 1996's Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk has become a cult author who regularly attracts both the interest of Hollywood and the bewilderment of readers who have never seen writing so fearless, modern, and smart.

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants.

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Palahniuk is one of the freshest, most intriguing voices to appear in a long time. He rearranges Vonnegut's sly humor, DeLillo's mordant social analysis, and Pynchon's antic surrealism (or is it R. Crumb's?) into a gleaming puzzle palace all his own.