A hilarious, suspenseful metaphysical thriller following a day in the life of an English professor who would rather be lifting weights from the author of the cult hit The Novelist
Harold, a middling literature professor at a liberal arts college, lives in a state of dissatisfaction and fear. His colleagues and students evoke nothing but disgust and disdain. None of them understand strength, power, and spiritual actualization like he does. His university’ s campus— seemingly picturesque— constantly threatens to reveal something sinister.
Over the course of a single afternoon, he wanders the halls, sits in meetings, steals from a student, and goes to the gym— all while reflecting on his professional and existential situation. With every line of Harold’ s frenetic consciousness, his mundane routine transforms into something more foreboding, culminating in an ingenious twist.
Brilliantly imagined and darkly funny, Muscle Man is as much a critique of resentment and contemporary masculinity as a satire on the state of higher education, exploring weakness and strength, rationality and irrationality, the spirit and the flesh, and the individual and the collective.
With his minute-to-minute occupation of Harold’ s existential disquietude, Castro imbues the novel’ s philosophical inquiries with thrilling suspense. Is Harold a raving lunatic whose disdain stems from his own perilous inadequacies, or is there something truly sinister about his colleagues? When all is said and done, is strength a virtue, or a mirage?
