“Stylish, strange, and spellbinding, Michael Clune’s novel tells the story of a teenage boy who suffers his first panic attack and is sent down a dark rabbit hole of rock music, literature, and self-discovery—or discovery of a self that might just be part Greek god. Clune’s book is full of unexpected, odd turns, but is told with such skill that the reader—like the story’s hero himself—is willing to forget what he knows and go along on a wild ride.” —Town & Country
“Pan is hypnotic, eerie, and surprisingly affecting.” —Our Culture
“Michael Clune’s psychological fiction Pan . . . has literary circles buzzing . . . Rendered in dazzling prose, Clune’s debut novel paints a luminous portrait of the unique psychosis that growing up in suburbia can foster.” —Bustle (Best New Books Summer 2025)
“With prose as strange as it is hypnotizing, Pan will leave you breathless and wanting for more.” —Harper’s Bazaar
“Evocative and erudite . . . The narrative barrels toward a frightening and enigmatic ending. This staggering coming-of-age saga is tough to shake.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[Pan] explodes the central dilemma of the panic attack—what is real? and then, whether real or illusory, on what plane can I approach?—and wraps it all up in a moving coming-of-age story.” —Literary Hub
“Intriguingly complex . . . A sly and artful bildungsroman.” —Kirkus
“Michael Clune writes lucid, shrewd, startling prose capable of laying bare pockets of human experience that might otherwise go without words. Pan proves his mesmeric ability to return our world and selves to us made strange and changed; there is no other writer like him.” —Maggie Nelson, New York Times bestselling author of The Argonauts, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
“A strange, vivid, and intense novel about the mystery of consciousness and the magic of childhood.” —Tao Lin, author of Taipei, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
“I steal language and ideas from Michael Clune.” —Ben Lerner, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of The Topeka School; author of 10:04, one of the New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century
“Brilliant . . . A mind-bending, psychologically bending, really thrilling, interesting book.” —Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author of Fates and Furies
“A true original . . . A new Michael Clune book is a cause for celebration.” —Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting
“No one writes like Michael Clune. His uncanny ability to fuse the universal with the arcane breaks new ground for the bildungsroman in Pan, where he dexterously stacks up spinning plates until, before you know it, there’s nothing left but changeling magic. I didn’t want the book to end, and I’m still trying to figure out how it transformed the inscrutable doom of adolescence into a symphonic odyssey with style to spare.” —Blake Butler, author of Molly
“This strange anti-love child of Arthur Machen, Philip K. Dick, and William S. Burroughs infected my brain with odd humor, paranoia, and existential dread. Bursting with truly breathtaking prose, Pan is an ontological coming of age story for, well, the ages.” —Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts
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