Apex Hides the Hurt - Tapa dura

"Apex: Hides the Hurt" is a brilliant contemporary satire on the world of marketing, in which memory, race and history are conveniently subsumed into the cover-up of corporate branding. A 'nomenclature consultant' - an expert on naming the most disparate things, from antidepressants to cars, and spoons to plasters - is summoned by the city authorities of Winthrop to decide on its new name. Lucky Aberdee, the millionaire software entrepreneur, wants the name changed to something that will reflect the town's capitalist aspirations; Albie Winthrop, eccentric son of the town's aristocracy, thinks Winthrop is a perfectly appropriate name and can't imagine what the fuss is all about; and Regina Goode, the Mayor, a descendant of the black settlers who founded the town, has her own secret agenda for what the name should be. What name will our limping word-catcher finally choose, thus deciding the future of the whole town and population?

COLSON WHITEHEAD is the author of the novels The Intuitionist, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and John Henry Days, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Young Lions Fiction Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The Colossus of New York, an essay collection about the city, was a New York Times Notable Book. A recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award and a MacArthur Fellowship, he lives in New York City.