A darkly funny and profoundly moving new novel by award-winning author Patrick Cottrell. And who did I think I was, trying to teach the troubled youth how to write?... I would say I was Dan Moran, a Korean adoptee, single, approaching forty, once plain-in-appearance as a woman, now ugly as a man, that’s who or what I thought I was. Most importantly, I was no longer useless, I was a writer. Five years after the death of his youngest brother, Dan Moran is now the published trans author of the autofictional novel Sorry to Disrupt the Peace . He is teaching fiction in Brooklyn and working on his next book–a psychological thriller–when a mysterious envelope arrives for him in the mail. Addressed to the wrong name, it includes a childhood photo of his deceased brother. But who would send such a thing, and why? Against his better judgment, Dan returns to his childhood home on the eve of his brother’s memorial dinner. His estranged family is surprised to see him, but he ignores them. He drives around in his brother’s Honda Accord, believing he is a detective. He searches for a constellation of unidentified women who may have been involved with his brother, all while being mistaken for another man. He hopes his investigation will reveal exactly who he was to his brother, but in a series of unsettling and destabilizing encounters, what he discovers is the irrevocable distance between who we are and how we are perceived. Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is Patrick Cottrell’s long-awaited second novel—an existential noir, an absurd comedy, a complex character study, and a heartbreaking inquiry into the paradox of identity, memory, and the very enterprise of writing fiction. “ Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is prescient and captivating, hilarious and horrifying. A book that enchants and entices and enrages is a rare thing; Patrick Cottrell has once again solidified his prose as knowing, and generous, and vicious, and tender.” - Bryan Washington, author of Palaver, National Book Award finalist “While reading Afternoon Hours of a Hermit , I was rapt, jolted, and thrilled. I lost count of how many times I paused to reread a line, astonished by its precision, truth, and hilarity. I have fallen irrevocably in love with this novel; I want to write it a song. Read this book if you want to feel more alive.” - R. O. Kwon, nationally bestselling author of Exhibit “A rain-soaked neo-noir and a comedy of manners, a philosophical disquisition, and a wrenching exploration of grief, Patrick Cottrell’s Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is the work of an extraordinarily gifted writer. It is one of the most singular and thrilling novels I have read in years.” - Katie Kitamura, author of Audition, shortlisted for the Booker Prize “A hilarious and heart-wrenching whodunit where the central question is not who committed murder but what, exactly, is dead. With precise and crystalline prose, Patrick Cottrell deploys the visual and linguistic vocabulary of a noir to gripping effect. Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is a brilliant, comedy-laden meditation on the liquid, hard-to-capture qualities of grief.” - Rita Bullwinkel, author of Headshot, Pulitzer Prize finalist “Patrick Cottrell writes prose that is so clean, resonant, and pitch-perfect, it’s like listening to someone play the cello in a completely silent music hall. Somehow it is also a virtuosic work of comedy. It is not an overstatement to say that Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is a novel of genius.” - Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize finalist Patrick Cottrell is the author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace . He is the winner of a Whiting Award in fiction in 2018 and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award in 2017. Cottrell is currently an assistant professor at the University of Denver.