Chris Kraus: Summer of Hate

Novelist and social critic

Chris Kraus' latest novel,

Summer of Hate (Semiotext(e)), is both a love story and an exposé of post-Patriot-Act America. Protagonist Catt Dunlop wants to rescue the world one person at a time. She finds an opportunity when she meets Paul Garcia, an ex-con trying to live "a life of rigorous honesty." When they collide with the prison-industrial complex -- and the limits of earnest beneficence -- the couple learn the painful boundaries between romance and social redemption.