Alexander’s newest novel Locus Amoenus (Permanent Press, 192 pages) finds Hamlet taking place in rural America against the backdrop of 9/11 and the Iraq War. “Something is rotten in the United States of America.” So says Alexander’s narrator, a young man named Hamlet. After his father dies on 9/11, Hamlet and his mother, Gertrude, move to upstate New York, where they maintain a farm. After several years, Gertrude meets Claudius, a bureaucrat and scientist who contributed to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s World Trade Center report. Yes, this is Hamlet reimagined as a truther, and in this retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy, the protagonist isn’t just feigning madness—he’s genuinely losing his mind.

Locus Amœnus is now available on Amazon.