Alex Gilvarry "From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel"

A book release party for Alex Gilvarry, hosted by the Norman Mailer Center and Viking/Penguin.

High fashion and homeland security clash in this masterful debut by Alex Gilvarry. Boyet Hernandez is a small man with a big American dream when he arrives in New York in 2002, fresh out of design school in Manila. With dubious financing and visions of Fashion Week runways, he sets up shop in a Brooklyn toothpick factory, pursuing his goals with monkish devotion (distractions of a voluptuous undergrad not withstanding). But mere weeks after a high-end retail order promises to catapult his (B)oy label to the big time, there's a knock on the door in the middle of the night: the flamboyant ex-Catholic Boyet is brought to Gitmo, handed a Koran, and locked away indefinitely on suspicion of being linked to a terrorist plot. Now, from his 6' x 8' cell, Boy prepares for the trial of his life with this intimate confession, even as his belief in American justice begins to erode. With a nod to Junot Diaz and a wink to Gary Shteyngart, Gilvarry's first novel explores some of the most serious issues of our time with dark eviscerating wit.

A native of Staten Island, Alex Gilvarry has traveled extensively in the Philippines, where his family is from. He's the editor of the Web site Tottenville Review, he has been named a Norman Mailer Fellow, and his writing has appeared in The Paris Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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• Alex Gilvarry
• Norman Mailer Foundation
• Strand bookstore
• discussion
• Colum McCann