Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English
Categories
Science fiction

ALL CITY

Alex DiFrancesco

In a near-future New York City ravaged by climate change and economic inequality, a superstorm hits, leaving behind only those who had nowhere else to go and no way to get out. Among those who remain are 24-year-old Makayla, who works in the city's most ubiquitous convenience store chain, and Jesse, an 18-year-old, genderqueer anarchist living in an abandoned IRT station in the Bronx. In the aftermath of the storm, Jesse joins Makayla's group of remainders in an abandoned luxury condo building, carving out a small sanctuary in the midst of a destroyed city.

Meanwhile, mysterious, colorful murals begin to appear throughout NYC, bringing hope to the forsaken and left-behind. But the storm's castaways aren't the only ones who find beauty in the art: the media, having long abandoned the supposedly-hopeless metropolis, "discovers" the emergence of the murals. When one appears on Makayla and Jesse's repurposed luxury condo, it is only a matter of time before the landlord class comes back to claim the city for themselves.

Available products
Book Published by Seven Stories Press

Comments

Alex DiFrancesco's 2019 apocalyptic novel, All City, is a sharply-written story about devastation, desperation, and chosen family. Their new collection, Transmutation, explores similar themes through contemporary stories that center trans characters and their shifting, expanding lives. DiFrancesco's work exists outside of rigid genre expectations, and evolves throughout the pages of this book. Not one to shy away from violent, horrific realities of our world, their stories are likely to both break and move you. But it will be because the characters feel real and loved, and because you want to believe in their survival in a bleak and unforgiving world. Read more...

[...] Hampered only by an abrupt ending, this loving, grieving warning thoughtfully traces the resilience, fragility, and joy of precarious communities in an immediate, compassionate voice. -- Publisher's Weekly Read more...

Alex DiFrancesco's All City walks a razored line between hope and hopelessness, never forgetting that only a few are privileged to have a surfeit of the former. This is a harrowing and powerful love letter to a city on the edge of a slow apocalypse, and to the people that city--and the world--threatens to leave behind as it moves against the rising tide of an uncertain future. --Indra Das, Author of The Devourers

Alex DiFrancesco's All City provides a vivid, all-too-realistic glimpse into our climate-change future. Portraying the best and worst of what makes us human, the novel celebrates community-building, survival, and the possibility of hope, while criticizing the institutions that actively work to divide us. It is a rallying cry worth echoing. --Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother's Lovers

At last, a future New York novel with heart and heft. A hammer blow aimed at the present and its shiny display of bougie hipster climate capitalism. Read it! - Siddhartha Deb, author of The Beautiful and the Damned

All City engages the near future in New York City - a future we cannot help but imagine and fear - a city under water. A city whose heightened inequalities give way to complete chaos. The novel hits close to home, with a cast of characters who respond by producing a little utopia, amid a lot of dystopia, as they navigate the water, the chaos, and their relationships. Survival swirls together with loss, giving readers cold - and clammy - comfort. -- Alexandra Chasin, author of Assassin of Youth: A Kaleidoscopic History of Harry J. Anslinger's War on Drugs

Alex DiFrancesco's All City is a small miracle. Set in a storm-ravaged near-future New York City, it is that rarest of novels, one that begins as an unrelenting nightmare, then dares us to feel greater and greater hope as it goes on. It's about building a community amid the wreckage of what came before and about the choices we must make when there are no good choices to be made. A fiercely empathetic tour of a disaster most of us don't realize is already here, All City is a novel everyone concerned about the health and survival of our cities must read. --William Shunn, author of The Accidental Terrorist

Alex DiFranceso's new book is set in the near future, but some may find it a bit too near for comfort. After New York City is devastated by climate change, gentrification and capitalism and then engulfed by a superstorm, several survivors, including genderqueer anarchist Jesse and convenience store worker Makayla, try to make their way in this new reality - which could be our own sooner than we realize if we don't heed this warning. -- Ms. Magazine Read more...

20 of the Best Post-Apocalyptic Books of 2019, including ALL CITY by Alex DiFrancesco. Read more...