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I’m Riding High Upon a Deep Depression 

The Mandibles: A Family, 2029 – 2047

By Lionel Shriver  

25 Apr, 2017

The 2017 Prometheus Award Finalists

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Lionel Shriver’s 2016 The Mandibles: A Family, 2029 – 2047 is the third in a series of reviews … a series I am increasingly coming to repent ever having begun.

When investors decline to continue funding America’s soaring debt, the US’s foreign-born Latino President decides the only acceptable solution is to default on the debts. The consequences will reverberate for decades.

Many members of the implausibly named Mandible family used to take comfort from the knowledge that when their irascible patriarch finally died, his fortune would be divided among them. But the collapse of the US dollar (and the American economy with it) has stripped the old man of most of his assets. His remaining assets have lost most of their value. The Mandibles and America with them will be forced to do something unthinkable: adapt to changing circumstances.

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