The Vegan

Herschel Caine is a master of the universe. His hedge fund, built on the miracle of machine learning, is inches away from systematically sapping profits from the market. His SoHo offices (shoes optional, therapy required) are ready for desperate investors to flood through the doors. But on May 12, his mind is elsewhere-at his Cobble Hill townhouse and the dinner party designed to impress his flawless neighbours. When the soiree falters, Herschel concocts a prank that goes horrifically awry, plunging him into a tailspin of guilt and regret. As Herschel''s perfect world starts to slip away, he clings to the moral clarity he finds in the last place he''d expect: a sudden connection with his neighbour''s dog.

A wildly inventive, reality-bending trip, The Vegan holds a mirror up to its reader and poses a question only a hedge fund manager could: is purity a convertible asset? The more Herschel disavows his original sin, and the more it threatens to be revealed, the more it becomes something else entirely: a way into a forgotten world of animals, nature, and life beyond words.

Andrew Lipstein, the author of Last Resort, a novel that ''you''ll think about . . . for weeks after you read the last pages'' (Los Angeles Times), challenges our ideas of contemporary morality in his scintillating, provocative second novel.