Daniel Torday is the author of THE 12th COMMANDMENT, THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST, and BOOMER1. A two-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award for fiction and the Sami Rohr Choice Prize, Torday’s stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and n+1, and have been honored by the Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays series. Torday is a Professor of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College.

THE 12TH COMMANDMENT

Due Out 1/17/23 from St. Martin’s Press

Swirling with secrets and their consequences, exploring how revelation and redemption might be accessed through sin, and driven through twists and turns toward a startling conclusion, The 12th Commandment is a brilliant novel by award-winning author Daniel Torday.

The Dönme sect―a group of Jewish-Islamic adherents with ancient roots―lives in an isolated community on rural land outside of smalltown Mt. Izmir, Ohio. Self-sustaining, deeply-religious, and heavily-armed, they have followed their self-proclaimed prophet, Natan of Flatbush, from Brooklyn to this new land.

But the brutal murder of Natan’s teenage son throws their tight community into turmoil.

When Zeke Leger, a thirty-year-old writer at a national magazine, arrives from New York for the funeral of a friend, he becomes intrigued by the case, and begins to report on the murder. His college girlfriend Johanna Franklin prosecuted the case, and believes it is closed. Before he knows it, Zeke becomes entangled in the conflict between the Dönme, suspicious local citizens, Johanna, and the law―with dangerous implications for his body and his soul.

PRAISE FOR THE 12TH COMMANDMENT

"Mourning, godless, Zeke makes for an unlikely detective as he investigates the mysterious Dönme cult and its connection to the murder of a teenage boy in Ohio. The novel pairs the gripping mystery of Raymond Chandler with the existential inquiry of Philip Roth, then arms the two with AR15s and a kosher banquet of edibles. A rare, literary delight. Daniel Torday is operating in his prime."
--Michelle Zauner, author of Crying in H Mart

"What a wild, delightful and utterly insane book! The 12th Commandment is a gripping, profound, and utterly absorbing novel in which an investigation into a murder becomes an investigation into mysticism, community, drugs, and what we find when we push our minds to the very limit." --Phil Klay, author of Redeployment and Missionaries

"The 12th Commandment is a one of-a-kind pleasure. A dark murder mystery full of surprises, but also a romantic comedy, but also a serious novel of ideas. Featuring a likable millennial journalist, a likable millennial prosecutor, and –– only in America! -- a cannabis-loving, assault rifle-toting, ultra-orthodox messianic Jewish cult on a commune in rural Ohio. And also: splendidly written." -- Kurt Andersen, author of Turn of the Century and True Believers

"Daniel Torday's third novel is a revelation, a page-turner with bursts of prophecy and poetry. The 12th Commandment feels like a genre unto itself--theological noir, Ohio gothic. Torday is such a sharp observer of the spaces where American communities overlap and where the secular and the sacred collide. It's thrilling to read one of my favorite writers doing something utterly, dazzlingly new." -- Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and Orange World

PRAISE FOR BOOMER1

“A contemporary satire with Shakespearean echoes… Torday reveals the artificiality of all identity markers, from given names to generational monikers…. The hybridization of past and present permeates the novel, complicating any division between ‘us’ and ‘them’.”

— The New York Times Book Review

“Intergenerational warfare, sparked by the unforgiving economics of the new millennium, is a great premise for a novel. With “Boomer1” Daniel Torday is clearly enjoying himself…. “Boomer1” is a sharp, bright and often amusing snapshot of this unwieldy economic moment.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“A thoughtful, taut, and engaging commentary on how social media can escalate personal angst into a terrorist act that turns deadly... Boomer1's knowing take on identity politics and generational turmoil will make many people smile. The novel is artfully written and well worth reading." —Philadelphia Inquirer

“A hilariously accurate critique of today’s me-obsessed, hyper-connected, ultrasensitive society… Torday does hit the nail square on the head.” —San Francisco Chronicle

"Refreshingly (if at times devastatingly) uncanny, funny, and clever."

—The Millions

"Torday’s writing is funny and insightful. He adeptly captures the current zeitgeist, where a tree that falls but is not captured on Instagram doesn’t make a sound." - The Nebraska Journal Star

"Torday's gifts as a writer are brilliantly displayed in the details of Cassie and Mark's inner and outer worlds... Stylishly written, cleverly observed, and boldly imagined." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A hilarious story about generational conflict brought to a boiling point... Torday’s wry examination of those attempting to survive in postrecession America is particularly poignant."-- PW

"A sharp, funny take on the divide between baby boomers and millennials." --Entertainment Weekly

"Torday has his finger on the pulse of American society in the 21st century, and he smartly suggests that when it comes to relationships between the generations, the patient may not be in the best of health."

--Shelf Awareness

“A brilliant novel about a new lost generation...Torday’s writing is funny and insightful." —Lincoln Journal-Star

Torday has some of the witty, neoteric, alternative-now chops of Don DeLillo...[his] narrative moves like a Clapton solo, fast and sinuous and haunting. And his black-humor story unfolds as naturally as a rainstorm. This alternative-now is both funny and harrowing, and Torday has one hand on the pulse of contemporary life and one hand throwing up a peace sign.” —The Memphis Flyer

"Dialogue is stellar, and humor dances through everything like a countermelody… In the end, Boomer1 isn’t about Baby Boomers and Millennials. It's about people trying to discover themselves, even if that means starting a revolution. Because we can always put on a mask and change our name, but we can't change who we really are."

—Washington Independent Review

“Boomer1's humour is matched by its meditation on character circumstance, and ultimately the incredible consequences of Mark's actions.” —The Sun (Scotland)

“In this inventive, hilarious, and audacious book, Daniel Torday elucidates the deep ironies and ambivalences embedded in how we live now. His ability to play with various cultural cross currents (from smug foodie culture to dark web chat rooms to macroeconomics to bluegrass) is truly impressive and captivating. Torday carefully traces out the complex origins of his characters’ ideologies. He shows us their blind spots and vanities even as he makes the intricate case for their arguments. And always he reveals their very human longing for an identity and a place in the world.”

–Dana Spiotta, Innocents and Others

"Daniel Torday’s Boomer1 is a wild, wickedly funny, and deeply empathetic look at modern American culture and politics. Sometimes he’s writing cutting satire, sometimes he’s writing Greek tragedy, and sometimes he’s just writing passages of staggering beauty, but he’s always a brilliantly compelling and necessary voice in these strange, troubling times."

-- Phil Klay, Redeployment

“BOOMER1 channels the riotous insecurity and injustice of our contemporary America into a frightening, hilarious, and all-too-plausible societal bildungsroman: a generational war goes viral, with very real consequences. Torday writes exquisitely about our hallucinatory simultaneous realities, where lives are conducted onscreen and offline, networked to millions of strangers and tremendously alone. Edgy and humane, this novel is live music for our screened-off world.”

-- Karen Russell, Swamplandia!

"Daniel Torday is a singular American writer with a big heart and a real love for the world. He has the rare gift for writing dynamic action scenes while being genuinely funny."

-- George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

"BOOMER1 is a dazzling new novel, from one of America's premier
writers."

-- Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son

"Boomer1 is a doozy--a prescient, cathartic love letter to Gen X, a fond call to arms for Millennials, Daniel Torday has written this generational cusp with wisdom, style and sincerity."

--Claire Vaye Watkins, Gold Fame Citrus

PRAISE FOR DANIEL TORDAY

"Torday’s ability to shift gears between sweeping historical vistas and more intimate family dramas, and between old-school theatrics and more contemporary meditations on the nature of storytelling, announces his emergence as a writer deserving of attention." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Poxl West is rendered in Torday's unobtrusively lyrical prose, superb Rothian sentences that glide over the page as smoothly as a Spitfire across a cloudless sky…an utterly accomplished novel. Daniel Torday is a writer, one with real talent and heart.” --Teddy Wayne, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)