American democracy is on its knees. The upcoming election could well be the last and the nation is braced for internal conflict.
Meanwhile, on urban patrol, a nightwatchman discovers the latest in a series of prostitutes beaten and left for dead by a mysterious assailant.
Meanwhile, his research into his family's past leads him to Sri Lanka under colonialism, with all its echoes of factional divisions and authoritarian rule.
Meanwhile, his colleague is implicated in a scheme to reverse-engineer storm dispersal technology and weaponise the weather.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile: from its basis in a dystopian future and its focus on one man in pursuit of another, Square Wave expands its scope and expands again-into history, musicology, geopolitics-to observe the varieties of decay that emerge from the militarisation of the human mind. The result is a novel that KCRW's Michael Silverblatt calls "the most extraordinary debut in fiction that I've encountered in many years... even when I had to suspend comprehension and travel beyond my comfort zone."