A long-time Taiwan expat, I finally managed to write a novel. Here’s the back-cover copy and cover.
Max Klein is a working-class educator. Overflowing with liberalness and bolstered by a handful of expensive degrees, he heads to the developing world to teach and make positive change in his students’ lives. However, when his own life becomes entangled in a net of hostility and corruption, he’s reminded that doing what’s right can be difficult. Max’s ensuing cynicism and downslide intersect with his brother’s escalating success. A blue-collar worker, Donald Trump supporter, and outright bigot, Karl Klein gloats over his financial victories and taunts Max for being an excessively tolerant and cerebral failure. Naturally for Max, the principled intellectual, deflecting jabs from Karl, the racist ignoramus, is a cinch. But as his employment prospects worsen, whether he can maintain the moral high road becomes unclear. Indeed, while lecturing at an institute on the edge of nowhere, the teacher gets schooled by the unlikeliest of students. The Bigot: or How I Learned to Love Donald Trump offers a literary glimpse into populism and Trumpism. It is, therefore, a tragicomedy.
Max sounds like a beta cuck, I’m looking forward to reading his glorious descent into darkness until he finally receives the Ultimate Enlightenment from our God Emperor Trump.
Can’t say I love Trump. Still don’t agree with him on a lot. But I do like he’s not giving in to the radical left or basically the ridiculous postmodernist and neo Marxists. As a minority in the US, I know some of the challenges we faced. But this whole we’re victims and the ridiculous solutions people who play identity politics try to impose if not for me. It’s especially clear to me now that when I disagree with the left they call me worst things like saying I’m a uncle Wong and sexist etc.
Hmmm… naturally joining all the other liberal media and calling a Trump supporter an “outright bigot” and one who has “financial victories”.
Also, having a book cover with the dollar currency symbol looking like a swastika, and Trump dressed up as Hitler with the nazi salute.
Have you called up your German publisher/booksite on this?
How long it take to think up this idea? 1 beer, 2 beers?
Sounds like this guy needs some rational emotive behavior therapy. Perfectionism is bad, man.
Suggested sequel: the brothers both confront the spiritual emptiness that comes with worldly success and descend into a messiah complex. (One of them is already prone.)
Aesop: they learn money can’t fix the world, but it can improve it a bit in places, and that’s better than nothing.
No, the book has three, if you will, national settings, but Taiwan is not one of those settings. Nonetheless, let’s just say that for Taiwan expats, the settings and circumstances in the novel should be very easy to relate to. Consequently, the book does not make any disparaging remarks about Taiwan, but even if it did, the merit of those remarks would have to be debated (criticism being a key component of critical thinking), and, in any event, they wouldn’t necessarily be my own views. The book is a work of fiction.
I think, on the surface, the teacher is very moral and well-meaning and he seems like a reliable narrator, but as the story progresses (or, depending on your politics, digresses) we see that things are not quite what they seem.
You sort of sound like one of the characters in the book. In many ways, this novel is about the left-right divide, so what readers think of the characters and their changes will depend on their politics. It’s sort of a test for the reader. Some should find it heartening, others disturbing, and there should be many views in between.