Necessary Errors: A Novel

ONE OF THE YEARS BEST BOOKS
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"Necessary Errors is a very good novel, an enviably good one, and to read it is to relive all the anxieties and illusions and grand projects of ones own youth."--James Wood, The New Yorker

The exquisite debut novel by the author of Overthrow that brilliantly captures the lives and romances of young expatriates in newly democratic Prague

Its October 1990. Jacob Putnam is young and full of ideas. Hes arrived a year too late to witness Czechoslovakias revolution, but he still hopes to find its spirit, somehow. He discovers a country at a crossroads between communism and capitalism, and a picturesque city overflowing with a vibrant, searching sense of possibility. As the men and women Jacob meets begin to fall in love with one another, no one turns out to be quite the same as the idea Jacob has of them--including Jacob himself.

Necessary Errors is the long-awaited first novel from literary critic and journalist Caleb Crain. Shimmering and expansive, Crains prose richly captures the turbulent feelings and discoveries of youth as it stretches toward adulthood--the chance encounters that grow into lasting, unforgettable experiences and the surprises of our first ventures into a foreign world--and the treasure of living in Prague during an era of historic change.