Description

A mesmerising and unsettling novel from a powerful new voice

Seeking release from their small-town existence, two teenagers drive north on a vaguely plotted road trip.

Adam and Teddy hope to leave boyhood behind. But they carry with them all the upsets and resentments they have accrued in their unhappy lives to date.

As the pair’s journey progresses, the mood fluctuates as each of them sets out to prove himself. The dynamics of their friendship begin to unravel, culminating in an act of devastating – and all too familiar – violence.

In taut and stylish prose, The Passenger Seat examines how men learn and perform masculinity. Rejecting easy answers, it keeps our eyes trained on the vanishing point where vulnerability edges into violence, alienation into aggression.

Publisher Review

"Unsettling and powerful . . . If the inciting episode reads as an overdetermined proof of male one-upmanship, Khurana's execution of it is nevertheless gripping. Things go pear-shaped, then the pear goes rotten as the boys harbor resentments, thwart each other and secretively plot." -New York Times "The Passenger Seat is structurally ingenious, rendered in unusual and fine colors, buffed to a shine. A perfect debut novel, explicit in its excellence! . . . it handles topics of universal interest-identity formation, alienation, power, loneliness-with daunting originality. Unlike a lot of so-called psychological thrillers, it is psychologically thrilling." -Molly Young, New York Times "[A] quietly frightening debut . . . The Passenger Seat inhabits both characters' states of mind, at times mesmerizingly, depicting their braggadocio, their resentments and their paranoia. As their crime sinks in, Teddy realizes that 'he and Adam are witnesses to each other.' Are they accomplices to one another or antagonists? The book's unknowns conjure a deep disturbance in the condition of male friendship." -Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal "As this novel begins, Canadian teenagers Teddy and Adam drive north without a definite destination-but not before one of them purchases a rifle. Khurana shadows them as they speed toward their fate, shifting between their perspectives as they spar with each other and begin to break free from the conditions that have always defined their young lives." -The Washington Post "This is masterly storytelling-tense, poetic-as Khurana teases apart the psychology of nascent masculinity . . . Cliched motives are eschewed, as is easy moralizing . . . The real brilliance of this novel lies in its ambiguity." -Kate Darach, Times Literary Supplement "Two high school friends fall into a rite of poisonous passage toward toxic masculinity . . . A novel for those who like their grimness unadulterated by any glimmer of redemption." -Kirkus Reviews "Vijay Khurana's profound and propulsive The Passenger Seat is a thrilling, terrifying, devastating ride. This perfectly pitched tale of masculinity gone wrong exposes the ways that intimacy can so quickly veer into violence-yet it evades easy moral pronouncements at every turn. Khurana is a brilliant stylist who drives straight toward the heart. I would follow him down any road." -Elvia Wilk, author of Death by Landscape and Oval "Vijay Khurana writes incredibly succinct and vigorous prose. His stories, always full of insight and depth, shine a light on the most nuanced and ambivalent corners of our lives." -Yan Ge, author of Strange Beasts of China "This book is simply great-an elegant novel written with disturbing emotional intensity and a sly, judicious sense of contemporary detail." -Lauren Oyler, author of Fake Accounts