And somehow, of course, it lacked that sprinkle of magic that makes invented worlds believable. Somehow the metaphors erred more towards the clichéd rather than to the startling, mirror-to-a-generationisms that had so characterised AHWOSG.
Somehow the observations were less unerring. That book, You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002), came as something of a letdown after the exuberant and often devastatingly accurate prose of AHWOSG. It is just that until A Hologram for the King, only one of them has been a straight-ahead novel. This is surprising because, since Eggers came to prominence both as the founder of McSweeneys and as the author of the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), he has written a number of bestselling books. Given that his second, the excellent What is the What, was a biographical work based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng, it may even be said to only really be his sophomore effort. It is surprising to note that A Hologram for the King is only Dave Eggers’ third novel.
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