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Table of Contents
About The Book
Brad Sela is living an apathetic suburban life in his affluent neighborhood until two new friends drag him down a destructive path toward self-discovery.
“My favorite millennial provocateur.” —Bret Easton Ellis
NYLON Magazine Must-Reads September 2023
“This book is raucous, raunchy, and sure to offend, and there are readers who’ll appreciate those things. I will forever defend Kazemi’s ability to write this book and entertain his intended audience against those who’d torch all three.” —Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank and a dozen other banned books
Freshly seventeen and entering his Y2K senior year, Brad is feeling fatigued by the cookie-cutter image his new-agey Oprah-loving mom and corporate-Boomer dad expect him to maintain, so when the new transfer students, Lu and Shane, invite him out to the woods, he agrees to see what this Baphomet-worshipping goth kid and classic-rock stoner have to offer.
“There's no way a robot wrote this book. A no-holds-barred tour of the Millennial mindset's spiritual DNA. Anything goes.” —Douglas Coupland
Soon, he’s dealing with the delicate balance of a double life, forsaking old friends for his new ones, and secretly embarking on a journey of indulging his darkest impulses—even documenting some of their most dangerous and disturbing exploits on their Handycams. But as their hijinks increase and threaten to expose him, Brad is forced to reconcile who he really is or risk drowning in his downward spiral.
“There is some twisted shit in this book that will likely fuck with your head and break your heart. Remember Woodstock ’99, and how a sick, profit-driven media culture pushed boys to their worst impulses? Think Larry Clark or Bret Easton Ellis by way of Charles Bukowski or J.G. Ballard. These kids are not all right. Kazemi’s prose produces the same visceral response as an early Tarantino movie. Proceed with caution.” —Douglas Rushkoff
At turns hair-raising and harrowing, Alex Kazemi’s thrilling debut novel is an unnerving examination of the collision of traditional masculinity, the early internet, and irresistible pop culture that shaped the turn of the century and transformed the way boys engage with the world. The bastard love child of Bret Easton Ellis and Gregg Araki, New Millennium Boyz presents an uncensored and unsettling portrait of the year 2000 that never could have aired on MTV.
“I walked a path parallel to my own, and it was honest, authentic and awful. New Millennium Boyz is an intrusively intimate narration of someone who lived in familiar coordinates yet a different social stratum. That wholly un-unique alienation and emptiness is one that fills me with a nostalgia for a past that was, and was not, my own.” —Brooks Brown, Columbine Survivor and Author
“In New Millennium Boyz, Alex Kazemi dissects the post-Columbine generation with wit and a sharp scalpel. His characters are damaged products of their time. While this is a dark chronicle, there's also a cozy High School Confidential feel to the tale and the various media Kazemi employs to tell it, resulting in a compulsively readable novel.” —Poppy Z. Brite
“Alex Kazemi is a boy wonder.” —Shirley Manson
“My favorite millennial provocateur.” —Bret Easton Ellis
NYLON Magazine Must-Reads September 2023
“This book is raucous, raunchy, and sure to offend, and there are readers who’ll appreciate those things. I will forever defend Kazemi’s ability to write this book and entertain his intended audience against those who’d torch all three.” —Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank and a dozen other banned books
Freshly seventeen and entering his Y2K senior year, Brad is feeling fatigued by the cookie-cutter image his new-agey Oprah-loving mom and corporate-Boomer dad expect him to maintain, so when the new transfer students, Lu and Shane, invite him out to the woods, he agrees to see what this Baphomet-worshipping goth kid and classic-rock stoner have to offer.
“There's no way a robot wrote this book. A no-holds-barred tour of the Millennial mindset's spiritual DNA. Anything goes.” —Douglas Coupland
Soon, he’s dealing with the delicate balance of a double life, forsaking old friends for his new ones, and secretly embarking on a journey of indulging his darkest impulses—even documenting some of their most dangerous and disturbing exploits on their Handycams. But as their hijinks increase and threaten to expose him, Brad is forced to reconcile who he really is or risk drowning in his downward spiral.
“There is some twisted shit in this book that will likely fuck with your head and break your heart. Remember Woodstock ’99, and how a sick, profit-driven media culture pushed boys to their worst impulses? Think Larry Clark or Bret Easton Ellis by way of Charles Bukowski or J.G. Ballard. These kids are not all right. Kazemi’s prose produces the same visceral response as an early Tarantino movie. Proceed with caution.” —Douglas Rushkoff
At turns hair-raising and harrowing, Alex Kazemi’s thrilling debut novel is an unnerving examination of the collision of traditional masculinity, the early internet, and irresistible pop culture that shaped the turn of the century and transformed the way boys engage with the world. The bastard love child of Bret Easton Ellis and Gregg Araki, New Millennium Boyz presents an uncensored and unsettling portrait of the year 2000 that never could have aired on MTV.
“I walked a path parallel to my own, and it was honest, authentic and awful. New Millennium Boyz is an intrusively intimate narration of someone who lived in familiar coordinates yet a different social stratum. That wholly un-unique alienation and emptiness is one that fills me with a nostalgia for a past that was, and was not, my own.” —Brooks Brown, Columbine Survivor and Author
“In New Millennium Boyz, Alex Kazemi dissects the post-Columbine generation with wit and a sharp scalpel. His characters are damaged products of their time. While this is a dark chronicle, there's also a cozy High School Confidential feel to the tale and the various media Kazemi employs to tell it, resulting in a compulsively readable novel.” —Poppy Z. Brite
“Alex Kazemi is a boy wonder.” —Shirley Manson
Product Details
- Publisher: Permuted Press (September 12, 2023)
- Length: 400 pages
- ISBN13: 9781637583913
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Raves and Reviews
“…a raw, raunchy, alternately sickening, sweet, maddening and heartbreaking read that immerses you in the lives of three privileged high school boys living out their senior year of 1999-2000, staving off boredom via increasingly depraved adventures. I could hardly put the book down, partly because it’s an addictive page-turner but also because it is set in such a specific time and through events that I reported on during my time as a correspondent for MTV News.”
– John Norris, Daily Beast
“New Millennium Boyz reads like a script for an American high school classic, taking the familiar characters and concepts of She’s All That, Heathers, 10 Things I Hate About You, Bring It On, American Pie and The Craft. Kazemi, having been born in 1994, is only just a millennial himself. And yet he writes with such vivid candour that you can practically smell the fresh paint coming off the white picket fences of the wide suburban streets, Stars and Stripes waving in the breeze and the engines of Jeep convertibles revving into high school car parks.”
– The Face
“Millennial boyhood was way more messed up than we’d like to remember. Alex Kazemi’s debut novel won’t let us forget. Against the backdrop of our current Y2K nostalgia overload and the creeping manosphere discourse, New Millennium Boyz connects the dots back to the Columbine generation.”
– Vanity Fair
“New Millennium Boyz is one of the most depraved, horrifying and upsetting novels I’ve ever endured. And I hope that people see this book for what it is: an unnerving uncensored peek into the dangerous reality of Y2K boy culture and the horrible racist, misogynistic and violent behaviors that are normalized amongst young men. I understand why Alex Kazemi wrote this novel, but I’m also deeply saddened and frustrated that the many fraternal themes that are presented in the book are not idiosyncratic to the time period and are being embraced today, although occasionally, strategically, in a more sanitized insidious form. Male culture is only getting more difficult for young boys and men to navigate. They deserve better, and this book, in all of its violence, depravity and desperation should be read as a demand to change our collective culture that strips so many young men of their humanity… to all of our detriment. You will want to put this book down many times, similar to the way we turn our heads or click away from news that overwhelms us. But we all, whether we are aware of it or not, are in this world that Kazemi is forcing us to look at.”
– Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes
“...a corporate branded love letter to the late 90s/early 2000s in diary form; its characters overenthusiastic, repellent with coming-of-age sentiment. I soon realized what was actually unfolding: an unfiltered yet sharp satire of that very thing, an endurance piece I was unable to put down…”
– LitReactor
“New Millennium Boyz, the debut novel by Alex Kazemi, reveals a group of American boys for everyone to see, and does so with a driving, honest, and almost frightening narrative style. Readers are immersed in the minds and hearts of American teen boyz who are trying to understand—and live—in our desperate adult world. Kazemi's almost musical dialogue, and his novelist's craft capture the potential loneliness of these boyz with passionate intensity. While certain graphic aspects of the novel require that I do not recommend it for our youngest readers, I highly recommend it for middle and older teens and all adults who are raising boys.”
– Michael Gurian, New York Times bestselling author of Saving Our Sons and The Stone Boys
"New Millennium Boyz is a glimpse into the raunchiest and most deranged aspects of bro culture… This book should be read with caution and understood within the context of a patriarchal society gone mad… While New Millennium Boyz may be a troublesome book to read, we ignore the issues raised at our own risk."
– Dr. Thomas Keith, Author, Filmmaker, Educator
“’90s’ yesterbation, or molesting time for the sake of historical revisionism, is not what New Millennium Boyz has to offer. What it gives us is an honest query about how we can all change the world one book, one poem, one show, one picture, or one song at a time—but can we really without disastrous results? We need writers to challenge us, to wake us from our collective somnambulist dread. Books have a way of holding us in their pages with unmean-spirited, courageous arms. Kazemi’s writing of New Millennium Boyz is so critical to our need to communicate with one another about shit that, essentially, no one ever wants to speak about. That is his job well done.”
– Kembra Pfahler
“Enter at your own risk. Alex Kazemi has created a shocking portrayal of adolescent male suburban malaise at the fashionable height of Y2K. New Millennium Boyz moves with mad dialogue and visceral-iconic, shocking vignettes. This is a never neutral antagonistically alliterative dangerous debut novel that hits where it hurts. I can hardly believe he wrote this! (Fyeah, but knowing him, he would). Alex Kazemi should be exiled to Corsica!”
– Peter Ian Cummings, editor of XY Magazine
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- Book Cover Image (jpg): New Millennium Boyz Hardcover 9781637583913
