From the author of Reinhardt’s Garden and Saint Sebastian’s Abyss comes a breathless new novel of delirious obsession.

LESSER RUINS
by Mark Haber
Publisher, October 2024
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Bereft after the death of his ailing wife, a retired professor has resumed his life’s work—a book that will stand as a towering cathedral to Michel de Montaigne, reframing the inventor of the essay for the modern age. The challenge is the litany of intrusions that bar his way—from memories of his past to the nattering of smartphones to his son’s relentless desire to make an electronic dance album.

As he sifts through the contents of his desk, his thoughts pulsing and receding in a haze of caffeine, ghosts and grievances spill out across the page. From the community college where he toiled in vain to an artists’ colony in the Berkshires, from the endless pleasures of coffee to the finer points of Holocaust art, the professor’s memories churn with sculptors, poets, painters, and inventors, all obsessed with escaping both mediocrity and themselves.

Laced with humor as acrid as it is absurd, LESSER RUINS is a spiraling meditation on ambition, grief, and humanity’s ecstatic, agonizing search for meaning through art.

Longlisted for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize
A Washington Post Notable Book of 2024
A New York Public Library Best Book of 2024
A Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2024
An Electric Literature Best Book of Fall 2024, According to Indie Booksellers
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2024

« LESSER RUINS mounts decisive proof that Haber is one of the most rigorous and serious—and anachronistic—novelists working today. » —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

« Haber’s novel is fluent and compelling, often rhapsodic, with a cumulative power to its repetitions. » —Hal Jensen, Times Literary Supplement

Mark Haber was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Florida. His debut novel, Reinhardt’s Garden (2019, Coffee House Press), was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His second novel, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss (2022, Coffee House Press), was named a best book of 2022 by the New York Public Library, Literary Hub, and Publishers Weekly. Mark’s fiction has appeared in Guernica, Southwest Review, and Air/Light, among others. He lives in Minneapolis.