“A rip-roaring political satire set in the near future, as the U.S. president takes aim at a third term…high-spirited romp, a welcome bolt of brilliantly zany fantasia for our grim and dour times…As displayed in his great Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2012), Fountain’s sweet spot is the intersection between reality TV and reality, an intellectual and comedic playground…Fountain goes on to have about as much fun as you can have with the 26 letters of the alphabet. A comic masterpiece. The current administration is finally getting the book it deserves.”
—Kirkus (starred review)

“Fountain turns this scathing satire to the most relevant story of our time: the twists and turns of American democracy as it hurtles toward authoritarianism.” 
—LitHub

“Fiction is truer than real life in Rasputin Swims the Potomac, an audacious, rip-roaring, and terrifying good time. Don’t read ABOUT this book―it will sound too crazy! Dive in and see for yourself… Ben Fountain is a prophet, comic genius and a master storyteller.”
—Maria Semple, bestselling author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Go Gentle

“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” is a masterpiece of satire, and somehow, he’s managed to do it again…. Fountain pulls it off with his gleefully absurd sense of humor.”
—The L.A. Times

“[A] brilliant satire…. More than a laugh riot, this offers an unflinching view at the bottomless depths opened by a president ‘whose ego has wormholes Freud never dreamt of.’ It’s a mordant and chilling portrait of a national hellscape.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A withering satire…timely and terrifying, Fountain’s version of the current and potentially future state of American politics and culture is simultaneously wild and absurd yet eerily plausible.”
—Booklist (starred review)

Reporter Clarence Thomas Jr. is looking for a great story, former country music teen star Faith Spack has parlayed her fame into a job at the White House, and the two-term incumbent president is campaigning for a constitutionally dubious third term.

After an outbreak at a campaign rally, a mysterious new pandemic of “weeping sickness” sweeps the nation, threatening the president’s hold on the Oval Office. Desperate to retain power, he enlists the mystical pro wrestler Rasputin to help ensure his reelection and guarantee additional seasons of his presidential reality TV show, The Real West Wing.

But as Rasputin’s appeal threatens to exceed the president’s, and the wrestler’s supposedly supernatural powers start to seem like the real thing, the campaign finds itself trapped in a spandex-clad destiny no number of executive orders can control, one in which both Clarence and Faith are compelled to play increasingly large parts.

Hilarious, compelling, and tragically relevant, Rasputin Swims the Potomac is both an escape and a warning, a scathing satire that explores the twists and turns of American democracy as it hurtles toward authoritarianism.