Pan: The must-read coming-of-age novel of 2025

Michael Clune

Jul 2025 · Random House

Ebook

336

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About this ebook

A strange and brilliant teenager's first panic attacks send him down a rabbit hole in this wild, critically acclaimed debut.

'A stunning debut' GUARDIAN
'Stylish and unsettling' OBSERVER
'A true original' PAUL MURRAY
'Brilliant . . . Mind-bending, psychologically intricate, really thrilling' LAUREN GROFF

Nicholas has plenty of reasons to feel unstable. He's fifteen, the child of divorced parents, living with his mostly absent dad in the bleak Chicago suburbs, and an outsider at school. Then, one day, he forgets how to breathe. The doctor calls it panic, but Nicholas suspects something stranger: that the Greek god Pan is trapped inside him.

As his sense of reality fractures, Nicholas and his friends search for answers in art, music and literature, reaching beyond the limits of their lives. Thrilling, surprising and darkly funny, Pan explores the unsettling forces shaping our inner worlds.

A WASHINGTON POST, TIME and SLATE Book of the Year

A strange and brilliant teenager's first panic attacks send him down a rabbit hole in this wild, critically acclaimed debut. 'A stunning debut' GUARDIAN 'Stylish and unsettling' OBSERVER 'A true original' PAUL MURRAY 'Brilliant . . . Mind-bending, psychologically intricate, really thrilling' LAUR...

About the author

Michael Clune is the critically acclaimed author of the memoirs Gamelife and White Out, chosen by the New Yorker as one of the best books of 2013. Clune’s work has appeared in Harper’s, the New Yorker, Granta and elsewhere, while he has been recognised by fellowships and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, and others. He is currently the Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University and lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

Michael Clune is the critically acclaimed author of the memoirs Gamelife and White Out, chosen by the New Yorker as one of the best books of 2013. Clune’s work has appeared in Harper’s, the New Yorker, Granta and elsewhere, while he has been recognised by fellowships and awards from the John Simo...

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