London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Oct 20, 2025

A Novel Imagines the Next Wave of Refugees: Americans

A Novel Imagines the Next Wave of Refugees: Americans

In Ken Kalfus’s deeply intriguing new novel, “2 A.M. in Little America,” the next American civil war has already taken place. The people of the United States have become the world’s newest and biggest cohort of refugees, following Syrians and Salvadorans and many others into the cross-border and transoceanic routes of mass migration and diaspora.

As the novel opens, the Americans living in exile in an unnamed country form an underclass of low-wage labor, exploited and vilified by the locals.

The refugees carry the stigma of their Americanness, and studiously avoid one another’s company. “We were humiliated by what had happened; we would have reminded each other only of our grief and our shame,” Kalfus writes. The uprooted Americans can see that the locals have the deepest contempt for “how far our country had fallen.”

Kalfus is the author of a half-dozen novels and story collections, and his fiction often makes use of the events of the day (9/11, Chernobyl, the Iraq war) to create mordant satires and allegories about modern life.

In “2 A.M. in Little America” he turns the conceit of his novel into a tense and often beautiful work of reflection on the American present. His protagonist, Ron Patterson, is an apolitical man exiled, as a young adult, from a city somewhere in the American heartland, the notorious site of some of the ugliest incidents of the civil war.

Patterson is a loner, and as with so many immigrants and refugees in the real United States, his legal status is precarious in his adopted country. He’s forced to watch and listen as anti-immigrant activists express their grievances. “A MILLION UNEMPLOYED IS A MILLION IMMIGRANTS TOO MANY,” reads an airplane banner ad.

The tables have turned on the American people, and Kalfus milks the irony in some ways that are predictable, and in others that are truly surprising.

At first, Patterson’s exile is a deeply existential one, focused on an obsession with a woman he thinks he sees everywhere in his adopted city. Then he’s forced to flee to yet another country, where he settles in an “enclave” of Americans. In this Little America, he’s thrust into a political drama.

Competing militias of American exiles are intent on continuing their internecine warfare on foreign ground, and we learn about the atrocities both sides committed back home. Anyone familiar with the violence inflicted by the United States and its proxies in various imperial adventures around the globe will recognize the inspiration for Kalfus’s imagined back story — most notably, the crimes at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Once again, the chickens have come home to roost.

What’s more interesting in “Little America” is an idea Kalfus repeats often: that the displaced Americans have a “look” and way of being that sets them apart from the locals. Nostalgic for the consumerism of home, they build crude replicas of big-box retailers, complete with their familiar color schemes.

They share a passion for walking dogs. “People wore their clothes in the American style,” Kalfus writes, “and their faces were recognizably American.” But if the country they came from was a global melting pot, what does an “American” face look like?

One wishes Kalfus had explored this idea further. Race and class conflicts are at the heart of the real-life disorder Americans are living, but Kalfus elides those differences in this work.

Still, “2 A.M. in Little America” is a highly readable, taut novel. It pulls the reader into its world, and suggests that many interesting human complications await us at the end of the story called the United States of America.


2 A.M. IN LITTLE AMERICA
By Ken Kalfus

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/59849183-2-a-m-in-little-america



Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Windows’ Own ‘Siri’ Has Arrived: You Can Now Talk to Your Computer
Thailand and Singapore Investigate Cambodian-Based Prince Group as U.S. and U.K. Sanctions Unfold
‘No Kings’ Protests Inflate Numbers — But History Shows Nations Collapse Without Strong Executive Power
Chinese Tech Giants Halt Stablecoin Launches After Beijing’s Regulatory Intervention
Manhattan Jury Holds BNP Paribas Liable for Enabling Sudanese Government Abuses
Trump Orders Immediate Release of Former Congressman George Santos After Commuting Prison Sentence
S&P Downgrades France’s Credit Rating, Citing Soaring Debt and Political Instability
Ofcom Rules BBC’s Gaza Documentary ‘Materially Misleading’ Over Narrator’s Hamas Ties
Diane Keaton’s Cause of Death Revealed as Pneumonia, Family Confirms
Former Lostprophets Frontman Ian Watkins Stabbed to Death in British Prison
"The Tsunami Is Coming, and It’s Massive": The World’s Richest Man Unveils a New AI Vision
Outsider, Heroine, Trailblazer: Diane Keaton Was Always a Little Strange — and Forever One of a Kind
Dramatic Development in the Death of 'Mango' Founder: Billionaire's Son Suspected of Murder
Two Years of Darkness: The Harrowing Testimonies of Israeli Hostages Emerging From Gaza Captivity
EU Moves to Use Frozen Russian Assets to Buy U.S. Weapons for Ukraine
Europe Emerges as the Biggest Casualty in U.S.-China Rare Earth Rivalry
HSBC Confronts Strategic Crossroads as NAB Seeks Only Retail Arm in Australia Exit
U.S. Chamber Sues Trump Over $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee
Shenzhen Expo Spotlights China’s Quantum Step in Semiconductor Self-Reliance
China Accelerates to the Forefront in Global Nuclear Fusion Race
Yachts, Private Jets, and a Picasso Painting: Exposed as 'One of the Largest Frauds in History'
Australia’s Wedgetail Spies Aid NATO Response as Russian MiGs Breach Estonian Airspace
McGowan Urges Chalmers to Cut Spending Over Tax Hike to Close $20 Billion Budget Gap
Victoria Orders Review of Transgender Prison Placement Amid Safety Concerns for Female Inmates
U.S. Treasury Mobilises New $20 Billion Debt Facility to Stabilise Argentina
French Business Leaders Decry Budget as Macron’s Pro-Enterprise Promise Undermined
Trump Claims Modi Pledged India Would End Russian Oil Imports Amid U.S. Tariff Pressure
Surging AI Startup Valuations Fuel Bubble Concerns Among Top Investors
Australian Punter Archie Wilson Tears Up During Nebraska Press Conference, Sparking Conversation on Male Vulnerability
Australia Confirms U.S. Access to Upgraded Submarine Shipyard Under AUKUS Deal
“Firepower” Promised for Ukraine as NATO Ministers Meet — But U.S. Tomahawks Remain Undecided
Brands Confront New Dilemma as Extremists Adopt Fashion Labels
The Sydney Sweeney and Jeans Storm: “The Outcome Surpassed Our Wildest Dreams”
Erika Kirk Delivers Moving Tribute at White House as Trump Awards Charlie Presidential Medal of Freedom
British Food Influencer ‘Big John’ Detained in Australia After Visa Dispute
ScamBodia: The Chinese Fraud Empire Shielded by Cambodia’s Ruling Elite
French PM Suspends Macron’s Pension Reform Until After 2027 in Bid to Stabilize Government
Orange, Bouygues and Free Make €17 Billion Bid for Drahi’s Altice France Telecom Assets
Dutch Government Seizes Chipmaker After U.S. Presses for Removal of Chinese CEO
Bessent Accuses China of Dragging Down Global Economy Amid New Trade Curbs
U.S. Revokes Visas of Foreign Nationals Who ‘Celebrated’ Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
AI and Cybersecurity at Forefront as GITEX Global 2025 Kicks Off in Dubai
DJI Loses Appeal to Remove Pentagon’s ‘Chinese Military Company’ Label
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
×