This is the first – and most likely only – “blind date with a book” that I have purchased. A Hero of Our Time is apparently “whip smart with biting humor” but I did not find it humorous at all. It actually kind of made me feel sad – when it wasn’t making me feel so bored that I wanted to DNF it.

A Hero of Our Time is about a man named Osman Shah who works at an edutech startup called AAP. I am not one hundred percent sure what AAP does because I found the language of this novel to be so pretentious and corporate-y that my brain revolted against it and did not want to comprehend what I was reading, but I think the purpose of AAP is to automate postsecondary education and basically make administration and teaching jobs redundant. The focus of this novel is Osman’s fixation on sabotaging one of his colleagues, a white woman named Olivia Robinson who is determined to take over at AAP, and who is not above using Osman as a prop on her ruthless path to domination under the guise of diversity politics.

Olivia’s corporate machinations would be understandable if wasn’t eventually revealed that she is probably a white supremacist, but it is not like Osman is much better of a person. His head space is so toxic that it does not make for a pleasant read. He is full of self-loathing and there are many descriptions in the novel of how disgusted he is by his own body (So. Much. Description. Of. Sweat). He is also full of loathing for everyone else and is short on empathy. The only person he likes, or who he imagines himself in love with, is another colleague named Nena, who is also an unpleasant person and really mean to him. No wonder he likes her.

There isn’t even any comfort to be found in Osman’s relationships with his parents. Osman was estranged from his father when his father died (his father was an asshole) and his mother tells him that she has been diagnosed with dementia and that she does not want to see him anymore.

There is so much depressing truth to this novel that I do not see how it is supposed to be satirical. I may not be a Pollyanna, but A Hero of Our Time is just too negative for me to appreciate it. At least I can say that I am not the type of person who would work at a company like AAP.