Paul Metzger's life is in a state of disrepair; a writer in his mid-thirties, he is divorced and underacheiving. One winter afternoon he travels into New York to visit three people; an elder half-brother who wants little to do with him; a disgraced, dying father, once infamous as a Nazi sympathiser; and an ex-wife whom Paul still loves.

But Paul soon realises that he is being watched, and it is this fourth, unplanned and violent, encounter that will chanage more than one life, forever.

**

### From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A novel as grim as it is extraordinary, MacKenzie's debut tells the story of two estranged brothers at odds on how to view their Nazi-sympathizer father. Paul Metzger has troubles: a struggling writer with a dying father and an intense longing for his recently ex-wife, he's also estranged from his much older brother. In what ends up being more than a random act of violence, Paul is pummeled while trying to stop two men from assaulting a boy outside his Brooklyn apartment. Shortly after, Paul's father, Frank—an early Nazi sympathizer who retains some notoriety decades later—dies, and Paul receives a lucrative offer to write a book about his father. Meanwhile, Paul's hedge fund brother, Ben, under investigation for insider trading, faces prison time, and one of the goons who beat Paul pursues him across the city. All of this leads to unexpected turns that shed light on the major characters. MacKenzie sets up a New York rampant with alienation and misunderstanding, and his visceral narrative, powered by taut prose and braced with sturdy philosophical and psychological underpinnings, is a winner. *(July)*
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### Review

"*City of Strangers*, the excellent new novel by Ian MacKenzie . . . possesses a relentless, straight-ahead momentum, a powerful surge of pure storytelling oomph . . . Most memorable about *City of Strangers* . . . is its hectic urban rhythm, the shock and clatter of New York City at ground level, as rendered by MacKenzie's prose. The stop-and-start syncopation of his chapters turns the entire novel into its own mini-city, complete with violence and beauty, sorrow and wisdom, chaos and clarity."  (The Chicago Tribune)

"Worth your attention . . . Paul [Metzger] trudges through the wintry gray New York City days like one of those Graham Greene innocent Americans who get themselves destroyed for inchoate causes . . . Ian MacKenzie's novel is simultaneously lyric and chilling." (The Star-Ledger, New Jersey)

"Without a doubt, MacKenzie is an important new American writer." (Brad Watson, author of *The Heaven of Mercury*)

"MacKenzie's debut novel reminded me a lot of Paul Auster's *New York Trilogy* . . . MacKenzie straddles the line between thriller and internal examination of a man's failings, and his ability to do so establishes him as a young writer of serious talent and future." (Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, Pick of the Week)

"The New York City of *City of Strangers *is a lonely, violent place, shadowed by failure and the sins of the past, yet this is no simple neo-noir. There's depth and extension to the world Ian MacKenzie creates for his hero, and brilliant writing on every page. It's hard to believe this is a debut - and that much more exciting." (Stewart O'Nan, author of *Songs for the Missing*)

"Nothing about this complex and riveting novel tips the reader to the fact that it is a first novel by an author not yet 30. MacKenzie's ideas suggest experience and depth and the writing is solidly assured . . . Readers who loved Ian McEwan's *Saturday* should snap up this terrific novel." (Stan Hynds, book buyer, Northshire Books, Manchester, VT)