Immunity

Taylor Antrim

In the very near future, a devastating Ebola-like pandemic has struck the world, but for the 1% in New York City it’s an excuse for even more twisted behavior.

Taylor Antrim delivers a thrilling new novel that combines the best of dystopian fiction with a sharp-eyed exploration of class and wealth in the world’s capital. In this fast-paced paranoid, near-future New York City, we meet Catherine, a broke socialite who is getting sick. Desperate, she takes a job with a luxury concierge service that fulfills the most outlandish desires of the ultra-rich—even if that means hunting down the 99%. As the hidden agendas of her employer and his shadowy clients emerge, Catherine realizes things are not remotely as they appear and she finds herself a pawn of mega-corporations and government agents all eager to profit from the cure embedded inside of her.
Taylor Antrim is the author of the novel The Headmaster Ritual. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications including Five Chapters, American Short Fiction, and Best American Short Stories. A senior editor at Vogue, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

Book Praise

A gripping whirlpool of intrigue and danger.

—Scott Hutchins, New York Times

Set in an imagined America that's appallingly indistinguishable from our own, Immunity offers a double black vodka of dystopia: very dry, very smooth, and very lethal.

—Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland and The Dog

Reading Immunity is like coming down with some exotic virus: your pulse races, your temperature spikes, cold sweats set in, and for as long as you’re holding the book, you’re flat-out immobilized. It’s a thrilling shock to the system, an extraordinary novel.

—Jonathan Miles, author of Dear American Airlines and Want Not

In this smart, scary report from the day after tomorrow, Taylor Antrim gives us a new york we recognize immediately from our anxious daydreams: the broken city after the catastrophe. A paranoid thriller for an age that’s lost its faith in conspiracies, Immunity is both a delivery system for adrenaline and a first attempt at a survival guide for the future.

—Gabriel Roth, author of The Unknowns

I’m left haunted by how perfectly Taylor Antrim zeroes in on the zeitgeist of right now. To call Immunity a medical thriller doesn’t nearly sum up what’s contained here: all the panic, the violence, the desire we’re capable of if given the right circumstances.”

—Mary Beth Keane, author of The Walking People and Fever

A whip-smart send-up of New York City elite set in a catastrophic future America that feels chillingly real. Devastating and darkly hilarious.

—Laura Van Den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth and Find Me

If Bret Easton Ellis wrote a biothriller.

—Kirkus