A new day for New York City, a new book club pick.

"The Uproar," by Karim Dimechkie, is a thriller for the Mamdani era

In case you missed it, Zohran Mamdani has thrust Big Apple politics into the national spotlight, with progressives thrilling to his meteoric rise, redrawing of New York City’s electoral map, and potential reset of the Democratic Party itself, and detractors decrying his victory as an economic disaster, a signal to move to Florida, or, as Donald Trump put it, the triumph of a “100% Communist Lunatic.”

So, what does Mamdani have to do with The Ink Book Club? The Uproar, by Karim Dimechkie, our July pick and first novel, has among its central characters a well-meaning social worker named Sharif, a beloved but troublesome pit-bullmastiff named Judy — and New York City itself.

The novel captures the anxiety and inequity that undergird city life today, as well as its singular composition as a melting pot of neighborhood identities and ethnicities, the ultra-rich and the financially insecure. As acclaimed writer Elizabeth McCracken sees it, The Uproar is “breathless and breakneck, dark and funny, and astonishingly written, a deeply thoughtful page-turner about our modern world and all the beautiful, terrible mistakes we make inside of it.”

The editor who acquired The Uproar for Little, Brown, Ben George, told us he was drawn to it because it “vividly depicts and dramatizes one of the core themes of Mamdani’s campaign—the precarity of living in the city for all but the wealthy.” He thinks of it as “a blend of Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend with a Safdie Brothers film.” After George left the publisher, Vivian Lee edited the book and saw it through production. She loves that “Karim has created such a fascinatingly complicated character and has put him in every uncomfortable situation possible, forcing readers to think about what they would do in his shoes,” and how he has complicated the idea of a “good ally.”

We will not hold a Book Club live this week, to give you a chance to purchase and dip into the novel before we hold our first discussion around it. But, for our Book Club members, we’ve got some questions below for you to start with — and we’d love it if you’d share your thoughts in the comments.

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