The Violators

Alan Chambers is a nervous young man who dreams of becoming a respected professor of English. When he wins a place in a selective seminar called The Artistry of Contemporary Literature, his pleasure fades quickly. His classmates openly commit violence against people in the name of art, and they have handed Alan a single task: stop them.

The group believes it has uncovered a deep connection between writing, visual art, sex, and killing. Yet kidnapping and rape as tools for reading James Joyce and Homer have started to feel stale to them, and Alan is the only one who can pull them back from their own excesses.

The novel moves past the conventions of any single genre and works as a satire of contemporary fiction. Readers may hear echoes of David Lynch and William S. Burroughs in its unsettling, postmodern dread.