Trance A Novel

National Book Award FinalistA Los Angeles Times Book Review Favorite Book of the Year A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Novel of the YearIt is1974 anda tiny band of self-styled urban guerrillas, calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), abducts a newspaper heiress, who then takes the guerrilla name"Tania" and shocks the world by choosing to remain with her former captors. Soon most of the SLA are dead, killed in a suicidal confrontation with police in Los Angeles, forcing Tania and her two remaining comrades-the pompous and abusive General Teko and his duplicitous lieutenant, Yolanda-into hiding, where they will remain for the next sixteen months. These are the months of Tania's sentimental education.

Christopher Sorrentino is the author of a previous novel, Sound on Sound. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

"Sorrentino's vision here is kaleidoscopic, eliding fluidly from individual to individual, taking on a wide array of points of view."--David L. Ulin, Newsday
 
"Trance is a work of startling insight, marvelously and masterfully evoking the grim stuff of true American nightmares."--Colson Whitehead, author of John Henry Days
 
"This sprawling work is so ambitious and irreverent that it doesn't fit easily into any genre. . . . Full of descriptions sublime in their precision . . . Trance is a pleasure to read--delightful and often funny."--Los Angeles Times
 
"Sorrentino has something of Don DeLillo's ear for American white noise--for the hiss and crackle that fills the country's derelict spaces."--The New York Times Book Review
 
"[Sorrentino] remains a virtuoso, and much of the success of this book is due to his writing skill. . . . [He] is an insightful, sensitive writer who makes you believe you're seeing what he's describing."--Harvey Pekar, The Baltimore Sun
 
"Big and ambitious . . . It's method and scope are breathtaking."--Salon.com
 
"Trance doggedly dismantles the pedestal of celebrity and myth."--The Village Voice