From the mind of decorated economist Antara Haldar, Everyman is a bold new novelistic retelling of the story of capitalism. Treating economics' core concepts as characters driving its story, it challenges the orthodoxy and asks: by replacing strawmen with flesh-and-blood protagonists, can we change the plot and avert tragedy?
For 250 years, a ghostly hand, bloodied and invisible, has written the script of our lives. Everyman makes legible the ethereal ink in which it is etched by illuminating capitalism's universal exemplar, the textbook "rational actor"-the solitary, self-interested homo economicus.
Blending fact and fiction in dazzling ways, it presents the story of global capitalism through its key characters: the leading man of economics, Neo, as well as his reckless apostles, Finn, the model finance bro; Davos, the ambassador of globalization; Wash, Neo's envoy to distant lands; and Tek, the quintessence of the tech industry. In a saga spanning generations and continents, Neo's journey takes us from Chicago to New York to London, from Scotland to the Swiss Alps, from Wall Street to Burning Man, from the Greek debt crisis to the farmlands of India. Along the way, we meet a rich supporting cast of characters-the economic minds and political figures who have shaped our world, everyday people, and even runaway monsters.
An entertaining magical realism romp through economics, Everyman touches on the most significant economic events in global history, from the Great Depression to the 2008 Financial Crisis, Britain's Brexit vote to the inexorable rise of populism globally, and draws on disciplines ranging from moral psychology to philosophy to evolutionary biology to animate the possibilities for how we might reinvent our broken institutions-and ourselves.
By breaking form to ignite our moral imaginations, Everyman aims to inspire hope that by rewriting the modern-day mythology that is our economic theory, we can turn the narrative of our lives into a redemption story and alter the destiny of our civilization.
