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A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING

by Dave Eggers ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 19, 2012

Even so, Eggers’ fiction has evolved in the past decade. This book is firm proof that social concerns can make for resonant...

A middle-aged man scrapes for his identity in a Saudi Arabian city of the future.

This book by McSweeney’s founder Eggers ( Zeitoun , 2009, etc.) inverts the premise of his fiction debut, 2002’s You Shall Know Our Velocity . That novel was a globe-trotting tale about giving away money; this one features a hero stuck in one place and desperate to make a bundle. Alan Clay is a 50-something American salesperson for an information technology company angling for a contract to wire King Abdullah Economic City, a Saudi commerce hub. Alan and his team are initially anxious to deliver their presentation to the king—which features a remote speaker appearing via hologram—but they soon learn the country moves at a snaillike pace. So Alan drifts: He wanders the moonscape of the sparely constructed city, obsesses over a cyst on his back, bonds with his troubled driver, pursues fumbling relationships with two women, ponders his debts and recalls his shortcomings as a salesman, husband and father.   This book is in part a commentary on America’s eroding economic might (there are numerous asides about offshoring and cheap labor), but it’s mostly a potent, well-drawn portrait of one man’s discovery of where his personal and professional selves split and connect. Eggers has matured greatly as a novelist since Velocity : Where that novel was gassy and knotted, this one has crisp sentences and a solid structure. He masters the hurry-up-and-wait rhythm of Alan’s visit, accelerating the prose when the king’s arrival seems imminent then slackening it again. If anything, the novel’s flaws seem to be products of too much tightening: An incident involving a death back home feels clipped and some passages are reduced to fablelike simplicity.

Pub Date: June 19, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-936365-74-6

Page Count: 328

Publisher: McSweeney’s

Review Posted Online: June 14, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012

LITERARY FICTION

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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NORMAL PEOPLE

by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2019

Absolutely enthralling. Read it.

A young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up—sorry, can't tell you how it ends!

Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends , in 2017. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice; Marianne is strange and friendless. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Or both. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become.

Pub Date: April 16, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-984-82217-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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by Sally Rooney

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Review: A Hologram for the King, By Dave Eggers

Waiting for royalty: a tale of endless arabian nights, article bookmarked.

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Dave Eggers' new novel hits you with prose as stark and as luminous as its Saudi Arabian setting. A Hologram For the King tells of Alan Clay, who travels to King Abdullah Economic City to sell an IT system. As he waits to deliver his pitch, Alan encounters Saudis and expats in scenarios which make him look at himself and wonder: "Who was this man?"

Readers might ask similar questions about Eggers. Since his 2000 memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he's enjoyed success as a publisher and magazine editor, and founded literacy initiatives for children. His last book, 2009's Zeitoun, a non-fiction account of a Muslim man's traumatic experiences in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, demonstrated Eggers' gift for telling real people's stories in unobtrusive prose. A sense that he's never quite marked distinctive literary territory persists, but while his seventh book exhibits his versatility again, it should confirm Eggers' position among America's leading contemporary writers.

It comes to us in an attractive hardback edition which would delight its former manufacturing executive protagonist Alan, who – like both the country he hails from and the country he visits – is full of contradictions. He laments the overseas outsourcing of American manufacturing even though, in his managerial heyday, he opened factories in communist Hungary and busted union power in Chicago. "We don't have unions here," explains Alan's young Saudi guide, Yousef. "We have Filipinos." Alan's alertness to the Kingdom's hypocrisy fluctuates: he's curious about veiled women and jump-suited labourers, but when he's allowed to "pilot a gleaming white yacht through the pristine canals", he fantasises about buying a second home. Alan can't afford one of KAEC's pink condos, however, because he's struggling to raise his daughter's college fees, owes thousands to investors, and feels "superfluous to the forward progress of the world".

He's desperate to sell his hologram technology but weeks drift by with no sign of King Abdullah. One night, drunk on an illegal liquor named "siddiqi", Alan takes a steak knife to a cyst on his neck. Prohibition means Western visitors are "forced into the role of teenagers hiding their vices and proclivities from a shadowy army of parents". At an embassy party, Alan discovers a bacchanalian "bootlegger's paradise". He witnesses the more profound consequences of such strict laws when he meets a young musician who surreptitiously plays guitar. Saudi offers little to educated subjects like Zahra, a middle-aged doctor who snorkels topless so that observers might mistake her for a man.

Alan is convinced that his experiences pale by comparison to his Irish ancestors' arrival in the US and his macho father's heroics in the Second World War. The King's embryonic city appeals to Alan's longing to be present "at the beginning of something", to enact part of the pioneering that's enshrined in American mythology. But his inconsistencies limit the reader's sympathy: Alan is incapable of imagining any alternative socio-economic system to the one that's ruining him, and he lacks interests. Boredom is "at once exasperating and alluring", so why doesn't he read a book? Does Eggers believe that to have his character do so would be unrealistic?

Beneath Alan's unimaginativeness, one senses the author's self-conscious compulsion to remind his readers of their minority status, to honour a reality, at once grinding and abstract, that prevails beyond the page. This patriotic novel confronts America's industrial decline, but its pertinence also threatens to prevent it from becoming more than a symptom of the stagnancy that it describes.

Alan's yearning for action and approval lead him into recklessness which jeopardises his burgeoning friendship with Yousef. There's potential for a fulfilling relationship with Zahra, whose affection for Alan borders on inexplicable, but, although he kisses her while they're swimming underwater, he rejects her later. This might be rooted in a despicable line that he quotes from his ex-wife: "I don't want to have sex that someone wouldn't watch."

Perhaps he shares her lack of self-respect, but his ex's words echo Alan's response to news of the 2010 Gulf Coast oil leak: "Just end it, please. Everyone's watching." Even the most personal anxieties of the man who's pedalling an illusion are reflected in the wider world. Alan disappoints friends, hurts women and is a lousy businessman, but to his daughter he remains whole. "I'm the eye in the sky … I can see where you started and where you're going and it looks perfectly fine from up here," he writes to her. His siddiqi-soaked letters might be implausibly eloquent but they show a wise, sensitive parent.

It's fitting that a novel which eschews easy solutions borrows its epigraph from Samuel Beckett: "It is not every day that we are needed." Beckett, like Alan, knew about waiting for somebody who might never arrive. Unlike Eggers and his protagonist, he was uninitiated in the consolations of fatherhood.

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'A Hologram for the King': EW review

Some novels seem to naturally lend themselves to movie adaptations. Others don’t. Dave Eggers’ 2012 existentially absurd midlife crisis tale A Hologram for the King is one of the latter. It’s a story about an American consultant with a shattered marriage and a slightly estranged daughter who finds himself halfway around the world in Saudi Arabia trying to dazzle the desert country’s monarch on a mirage-like piece of technology. But when he gets there, the king keeps delaying their meeting over and over. It’s like Waiting for Godot by the Red Sea. Eggers’ book is largely interior. Its conflict is one of the soul. Again, not an easy movie to pull off.

The good news is that in adapting Eggers’ novel (which I, frankly, am lukewarm on), writer-director Tom Tykwer ( Run Lola Run ) was smart enough to cast Tom Hanks in the lead role. He gives an otherwise downbeat story some sorely needed levity. After all, if anyone can deftly juggle light and heavy, humor and dread, introspection and extroversion, it’s him. He’s also one of the few actors in his age group who I can imagine being not only game, but actually pulling off Tykwer’s surreal opening sequence, where Hanks’ character, Alan Clay, emerges from his suburban cul-de-sac home pantomiming the Talking Heads’ nervous riff on paranoid conformity “Once in a Lifetime” (“You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife/And you may ask yourself, Well…How did I get here?”). It shouldn’t work at all, but it does.

From there, Hanks’ Clay is stuck in a cramped middle seat on a very long flight to Jeddah, arriving in rough shape both physically and spiritually. It doesn’t help that too much is riding on this business trip, including his ability to pay his daughter’s college tuition. Alan is a stranger in a strange land, which provides the fodder for the film’s best moments. He undergoes a series of humiliations while he and his team await the king, who may or may not ever arrive at the ghost-town model city in the middle of desert (a mirage within a mirage). He flirts and gets frisky with a fellow expat named Hanne ( The Duke of Burgundy ‘s Sidse Babett Knudsen) at a Danish embassy party. He forms an instant Abbott-and-Costello relationship with his laid-back local driver-for-hire (newcomer Alexander Black). And he performs a bit of self-surgery on a metaphor-heavy golfball-sized lump on his back, leading him into the care of a kind-eyed Saudi doctor played by Homeland ‘s Sarita Choudhury who becomes more than just his physician.

If it sounds like Hologram is basically about a middle-aged white guy getting his groove back in the Middle East, well, yes, it is that. But if you squint hard enough, it’s also a little bit more. With his weary, sleep-deprived eyes, looming sense of personal obsolescence, and exasperated string of dead-end questions met by run-around answers, Hanks gives Clay a dimension that the character didn’t have on the page – a human dimension – that elevates an otherwise unexceptional film into something worth seeing. And while his problems may not look like your problems or mine, he still manages to earn our sympathy thanks to the actor playing him. A Hologram for the King may be about a man who’s lost his mojo, but Hanks thankfully still possesses his. B

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Review: ‘A Hologram for the King’ Is Elevated by Tom Hanks’s Portrayal of an American Everyman

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By Stephen Holden

• April 21, 2016

It takes an actor with the finesse of Tom Hanks to turn a story of confusion, perplexity, frustration and panic into an agreeably uncomfortable comedy. But that’s what Mr. Hanks accomplishes in the German filmmaker Tom Tykwer’s easygoing screen adaptation of Dave Eggers’s novel “ A Hologram for the King .” This fanciful tale about Alan Clay, an American consultant visiting Saudi Arabia to sell a holographic teleconferencing system to the Saudi government, has been transformed through the force of Mr. Hanks’s nice-guy personality. His performance elevates an ominous, downbeat reflection on American decline and runaway technology into a subdued absurdist farce with dark geopolitical undercurrents.

The movie is set in 2010, when America was still reeling from the financial crisis and months before the beginning of the Arab Spring uprisings that eventually transformed much of the Middle East into a grisly battleground. In the surreal opening scene, Alan walks down a suburban street, loudly singing the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime,” whose narrator asks you to imagine losing your house and your wife. All at once, we have landed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in a topsy-turvy world of technological disruption and hierarchal imbalance.

Alan is in a wretched state when he arrives. Broke, depressed, newly divorced and desperate to regain his financial footing, he is acutely aware that his entire future depends on the successful completion of a deal involving the sale of a miraculous invention that suggests the modern equivalent of Aladdin’s magic lamp. Later in the movie, we see a brief, underwhelming demonstration of its wonders.

From the moment Alan lands, he encounters humiliating obstacles. The king, he is told, is away but is expected back very soon. But the days drag on, and the lives of Alan and the three-person I.T. support team that preceded him become a Beckettian waiting game.

Instead of a modern hotel, Alan finds his assistants languishing in a sweltering tent without air-conditioning or Wi-Fi in the King’s Metropolis of Economy and Trade, a fictionalized version of King Abdullah Economic City. This metropolis, still under construction, consists of mostly empty skyscrapers. The scenes in which he wanders through this desolate ghost city, which seems in a state of suspension, are among the film’s strongest.

Jet-lagged and sleep-deprived, Alan tries in vain to find his bearings, while obsessing about a strange lump on his back that he unsuccessfully tries to remove. His tentative surgery on himself leads him to consult Zahra Hakem (Sarita Choudhury, from “Homeland”), a Saudi doctor with whom he develops an unlikely romantic connection.

A screen adaptation of “ A Hologram for the King ” could have taken any of several approaches. It could have been a satire of American provincialism and culture clash in a tech-dependent world, with Alan portrayed as a bumbling, overconfident fool living in the past. But Mr. Hanks’s embodiment of an unflappably positive, if frustrated, American Everyman, who refuses to give up or to surrender his can-do attitude, grounds the movie. Somehow, you suspect, his situation will be resolved by good old-fashioned American know-how.

Alan becomes infuriated but never enraged. Confronting disaster, he grits his teeth and puts on an optimistic face. Mr. Hanks, in his best clownish mode, scrunches his features into all manner of amusing grimaces. But even when Alan is on the brink of nervous exhaustion, you trust him to find the answers. The movie’s weaker scenes try to fill in his background and family history with flashbacks, in which we meet his ex-wife and daughter, whose college tuition he can’t afford. His father (Tom Skerritt) bitterly deplores the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries. As a former executive for the Schwinn Bicycle Company, Alan, we learn, once shipped jobs abroad.

Much of “A Hologram for the King” feels like science fiction. We’re familiar with pictures of the futuristic towers of Dubai , flickering in the heat. But this partly constructed ghost town in the middle of a desert suggests an outpost in a different galaxy, where Alan and his team resemble a befuddled, less confident Captain Kirk and his crew waiting for the aliens to reveal themselves.

Alan’s guide on this faraway planet is Yousef (Alexander Black), a goofy, oddly paranoid taxi driver who is obsessed with loud American rock music. Their scenes come the closest to traditional comedy.

“A Hologram for the King” ponders a modern world in the thrall of illusions. Of what essential use is a holographic teleconferencing system, we are never told. In their semireality, the King’s Metropolis of Economy and Trade and the ghostly holograms Alan is selling might just as well be a desert mirage.

“A Hologram for the King” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for some sexuality and nudity, strong language and brief drug use. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes.

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A Hologram for the King review – sappy midlife strife

Even Tom Hanks’s reliable hassled everyman act can’t lift this tale of an IT salesman adrift in the Saudi desert

“A nd you may ask yourself: how did I get here?” After a heavily trailed Once in a Lifetime opening which promises snappy, sassy, satirical thrills, this midlife crisis movie (from Dave Eggers’s bestselling novel) settles into an altogether more sappy stride. Tom Hanks is Alan, an IT salesman in the wake of a messy divorce, dispatched to Saudi to sell a virtual-reality system in a city that hasn’t yet been built by a king notable by his absence. Stranded in the desert, penning plaintive missives to his daughter, Alan starts to unravel, blaming his woes on a growing lump on his back, which comes to symbolise his inner sickness. Flashbacks to his home life rub shoulders with a more general malaise about outsourcing home industries to China in this peculiar melange of the personal, the political and the parodic. Alexander Black makes some dramatic headway as Alan’s driver-cum-guide Yousef, while Sarita Choudhury breathes life into blossoming romantic subplot which proves the film’s most intriguing feature. As for Hanks, he does a nice line in hassled everyman, but can’t quite inject an element of magic into Tom Tykwer’s movie, even when coincidentally reprising a touchstone scene from Splash .

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“A Hologram for the King” opens with a new greatest hits moment in Tom Hanks acting history. Set to “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads, he’s shown as a business man whose life has become a joke. As he talk-sings the opening lyrics à la William Shatner ("How did I get here?") the film mixes images of his house, car and wife going up in purple smoke with a close-up of him riding a roller coaster, looking blankly at the camera. Hanks' filmography is full of numerous mainstream performances, but this off-beat one takes viewers back to watching him meander around Steven Spielberg ’s “ The Terminal ,” or stuck at a crossroads in Robert Zemeckis ’ “ Cast Away .” As Tom Tykwer ’s adaptation of David Eggers’ novel proves, it’s entertainment just to stare back at Hanks.

Here’s a reasonably-sized star vehicle that finds exciting purpose in presenting an existential crisis. The opening sequence is a dream he has on a plane while flying to Saudi Arabia, leaving behind his past life of tanking the Schwinn company when he outsourced hundreds of American jobs. Hoping to make the money to pay for his daughter's college tuition, Hanks' Alan Clay is now trying to sell a hologram contract to the king of Saudi Arabia, who wants to build a city in the middle of the desert that will populate 1.5 million people by 2025. The irony is hard to resist from the beginning—a former failure of empathy, now selling a machine for impersonal business, to an enterprise that may as well be a mirage, for a king who never shows up. Alan has to travel an hour every morning from the city to the project's headquarters, only for a receptionist to tell him that the king is not in. The strange stresses pile up as his business trip becomes a seemingly endless, yet highly amusing farce: Alan's small tech team is stored in a tent but have no Wi-Fi, AC or food. Perhaps by no coincidence, a giant bump suddenly appears on Alan's back.

The cycle that the king's indifference places Alan into leads to a poignant truth behind our own dark clouds, our partial responsibility to push back against the negative forces of nature overwhelming us. Clay misses his shuttle to the king's headquarters because he somehow oversleeps each morning, which in turn forces him to call upon his driver/impromptu cultural guide Yousef ( Alexander Black ). Almost midway into the film, when Alan decides to defy the receptionist's demand to not venture past the lobby, he breaks the cycle. He gets upstairs and people know his name, as if they had been expecting him to sneak up there all along; actions against his bump yield similar results. In a feat of invested storytelling and performance, Tykwer’s strange movie makes these minor changes seem huge. 

It’s a disappointment, then, when "A Hologram for the King" transitions this anti-fatalism into  a succession of epiphanies you can get wholesale. As the narrative changes from a fascinating circle to a flat journey for Alan to find his new self, it drags to metaphorical checkpoints, like when Yousef drives Alan off a different path, and later when Alan is face-to-face with a wolf that is about to attack some sheep. As it slowly devolves into another mid-life-crisis-abroad tale, the movie’s charm starts to evaporate. 

After many car ride  scenes and wide open shots of the desert,  Tykwer injects a highly visual romance into  the third  act.  One  can imagine that aside from this story touching upon his interests in the  passage of time, the very passionate storyteller (" Run Lola Run ," " Cloud Atlas ") wanted to see a man and a woman swimming underwater, in a bright blue water that directly contrasts endless sand . But even as poetic defiance towards a nation that publicizes executions more than displays of affection between the opposite sex, Tykwer can’t match the previous exhilaration of Alan’s isolation. 

The people Alan interacts with closest are sporadically intriguing, with two performances that make clear efforts to expand beyond script devices. Black's Yousef has a naturally progressive camaraderie with Hanks, which Black treats with friendliness and occasional animation (despite being, like with Christopher Abbott's Fahim Ahmadzai in “ Whiskey Tango Foxtrot ,” more white-washed casting). Sarita Choudhury has an expanding part in Alan’s life as his doctor, and brings a sincere delicacy. The film’s most distinct character remains the king's new city, which says just as much about his Godot-like presence when shown as abandoned, skeleton-like skyscrapers with people living inside. 

Hanks remains a great everyman, which means here he can be a wonderful outsider, a surrogate into our realizations or failures. To Hanks’ credit, the actor is also able to find empathy for a recession-era villain; every time Tywker randomly cuts back to the  disturbing   silences  of Alan’s past life (standing in front of hundreds of workers, about to make a horrific announcement), our heart sinks with him. In some scenes he makes us laugh (when his chairs break, three times); in many others he simply welcomes us to feel small with him. Alan is one of Hanks’ less-flashy roles, but it largely confirms why we’ve made him such a central figure in American film acting. 

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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A Hologram for the King (2016)

Rated R for some sexuality/nudity, language and brief drug use

Tom Hanks as Alan Clay

Alexander Black as Yousef

Sarita Choudhury as Zahra

Sidse Babett Knudsen as Hanne

Ben Whishaw as Dave

Tom Skerritt as Ron

Tracey Fairaway as Kit

Writer (novel)

• Dave Eggers

Cinematographer

• Frank Griebe
• Alexander Berner
• Johnny Klimek

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A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers. That name was the reason why I picked up this book. In 2017, I read another novel of his titled “The Circle,” which I rated a 4 out of 5 stars. I found The Circle to be a powerful book, mainly because it was a sort of social commentary on the immense power tech companies today wield. It was also creepy and scary too. In summary, I expected great things from A Hologram For The King.

The novel follows Alan, an American salesman who is sent to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to close a deal, a deal that his future likely depends on. The 300 pages of the novel span from his arrival and culminate in his meeting with the King. In between, in a series of flashbacks, Alan reflects on his impending financial doom and his relationship with his divorced wife and daughter. Alan also meets a few characters with whom he spends considerable time. These interactions shed more light on the sort of person Alan is.

My Thoughts

This book is different from The Circle. Although, I can say that I’m getting what Dave Eggers’s theme is. But before I get into that, A Hologram For The King is character-driven. I have to say I don’t find Alan fascinating. He is just an average white American man. What pushes the book is the meeting he is supposed to have with the King. I’ll admit that kept me interested in the book. Also, it is well written, and I did not struggle at all to read it.

The book shares its sensuality with The Circle. I think Dave Eggers is that sort of writer. It is not an erotic novel, but Dave Egger’s characters( from the two books I have read so far) have sexual encounters, and those are described in the book.

Now, Dave Eggers’ theme seems to be stories wrapped among social commentaries. However, it is not as overt and universal here as in The Circle. Here, in A Hologram For The King, several hints are dropped throughout the book, but it becomes evident in the end.

The theme here is world trade, specifically how it relates to the United States.

At the end of the day, I rated A Hologram For The King a 3 out of 5 stars. It is a light and easy read. I do not know what sort of reader might be interested in it, but if it sounds like your cup of tea, go for it. In my opinion, The Circle would be a great fit if you ever want to read anything by Dave Eggers. Both books have movie adaptations (Netflix and Prime Video), both starring Tom Hanks, so you can also check out that instead of spending hours on this (It has a slightly better ending… barely).

Meet Nyerhovwo, an avid reader and aspiring polygot. Nyerhovwo spends most of his time reading. He enjoys exploring all genres of fiction except for romance, and is particularly fond of Stephen King and literary fiction. Nyerhovwo is also learning French and loves watching thought-provoking dramas, anime and Korean films.

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A hologram for the king, common sense media reviewers.

Book-based Hanks drama has drinking, sex; lacks a point.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Even when a situation seems at its worst, there

A father regrets that he can't afford to send

Several men beat someone; some blood is seen. Men

Drunk adults in bathing suits/with shirts off kiss

"S--t," "a--hole."

Starbucks, KFC, and Schwinn bicycles are all menti

Alcohol is against the law in Saudi Arabia, but ma

Parents need to know that A Hologram for the King , which is based on Dave Eggers' same-named novel, chronicles the life of a depressed salesman (Tom Hanks) who's trying to stay upbeat enough to make a killing on a sales trip to Saudi Arabia. Alcohol is officially forbidden there, but many overindulge…

Positive Messages

Even when a situation seems at its worst, there's still a chance it all can improve. So you might as well keep trying.

Positive Role Models

A father regrets that he can't afford to send his daughter to college. He also regrets his role in sending American jobs to a Chinese manufacturer. Saudi culture is portrayed as hypocritical, as alcohol is against the law, but the well-to-do have plenty of it.

Violence & Scariness

Several men beat someone; some blood is seen. Men set out to hunt wolves, but none are shot. Armed rebellion is discussed. Alan tries to lance a growth on his back; blood is seen on his sheets.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Drunk adults in bathing suits/with shirts off kiss and embrace at a party. A woman takes off her dress (no graphic nudity) and throws herself on a man, but he can't complete the sex act. A woman swims underwater wearing only swimming trunks. A man and woman have sex; passionate kissing is shown. A driver refers to a married man who "has sex with boys."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Starbucks, KFC, and Schwinn bicycles are all mentioned.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Alcohol is against the law in Saudi Arabia, but many adults are shown drinking wine, beer, and liquor to excess. Hangovers. Cigarette smoking. The camera passes through a room in which a man is seen snorting what's presumably cocaine.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that A Hologram for the King , which is based on Dave Eggers' same-named novel, chronicles the life of a depressed salesman ( Tom Hanks ) who's trying to stay upbeat enough to make a killing on a sales trip to Saudi Arabia. Alcohol is officially forbidden there, but many overindulge in black-market drinks -- and the salesman pays the price with hangovers. He has one alcohol-fueled sexual encounter (no nudity) but is ultimately unable to perform; in another scene he has sex with another woman who swims topless. Expect to hear the words "s--t" and "a--hole"; one scene implies cocaine use, and there's a bloody beating. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (2)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Extraordinary film!

If this was a beer, it would be flat, what's the story.

A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING (based on Dave Eggers' same-named novel) is set just after the 2008 American housing collapse. Salesman Alan Clay ( Tom Hanks ) has suffered an acrimonious divorce, business reversals, and lots of accompanying anxiety. To add insult to injury, he finds himself in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert, head of a team attempting to sell the Saudi king a jazzy 3-D communications system that features life-size human holograms. In other words, he's selling illusions. An engaging cab driver chauffeurs Clay through both the actual and metaphorical desert, suggesting that Clay's life could be far worse. The situation is part Kafka, part Monty Python, as none of the government representatives Clay is set to meet show up when they're supposed to, and no reasonable explanation is given. His team is placed in a large tent without air conditioning, food, or the wifi connection necessary to give their sales presentation, and he's stymied by polite but obstructive functionaries every step of the way. Clay does his best to maintain his equanimity in these less than ideal circumstances through liberal use of alcohol (which is risky, as it's prohibited). Then an unlikely romance sparks, which may lead to real change.

Is It Any Good?

This Death of a Modern Salesman redux is mystifyingly devoid of a dramatic arc -- but, on the other hand, Hanks' enduring likability and skill make it all easier to swallow. Throughout the film, Clay asks questions but gets no real responses. Business connections are promised, but the Saudis rarely fulfill them. Over and over we're shown that Clay is trapped in both a cultural gap that's blocking his business deal and a personal gap that's blocking his life. It's as if the movie has decided not be a storytelling vehicle but rather a virtual experience simulator that recreates in us Alan's discomfort, depression, and desire to drown the pain in booze.

It's no surprise that you can't help feeling the same yen for oblivion while watching. Just when it seems like a point is about to be made, there is no point. Through an error, the driver takes Clay through Mecca -- even though it's strictly forbidden to bring non-Muslims into the holy city -- but the episode has no consequences and no discernible meaning. Then, the movie actually gets interesting when Clay takes a chance on love but, to reiterate the theme of stoppage, the movie abruptly ends about 12 minutes later. This is particularly odd in that the action begins with the promise of quirky, otherworldly insight, as Hanks sings the words to The Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" while, as the lyrics dictate, his house and wife go poofing away into thin air. Around 90 minutes later, the credits roll, leaving the plot poofing away into thin air, too.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how A Hologram for the King depicts drinking . Is it glamorized? Are there consequences? Why is that important?

What are some of the ways the movie tells viewers about the situations that have led to the main character's troubles? Do you sympathize with him?

Are any of the characters intended to be role models? Why or why not?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 22, 2016
• On DVD or streaming : August 9, 2016
• Cast : Tom Hanks , Sarita Choudhury , Alexander Black , Ben Whishaw
• Director : Tom Tykwer
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Indian/South Asian actors, Gay actors
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Book Characters
• Run time : 97 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some sexuality/nudity, language and brief drug use
• Last updated : April 23, 2024

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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A Hologram for the King Kindle Edition

New from Dave Eggers, National Book Award finalist A Hologram for the King In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King , Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment - and a moving story of how we got here. 'A master of the surprising metaphor, Eggers's great skill is in tracking the exuberant chaos of thought, with all its sudden poignancies and unexpected joys' Daily Telegraph 'Among the most influential writers in the English language' GQ 'Eggers can write like an angel' Tablet

• Print length 304 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Penguin
• Publication date February 7, 2013
• File size 940 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00ADNPCJ8
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin; 1st edition (February 7, 2013)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 7, 2013
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 940 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0241145872
• #3,902 in Family Life Fiction (Kindle Store)
• #6,483 in Contemporary Literary Fiction
• #14,933 in Family Life Fiction (Books)

About the author

Dave eggers.

Dave Eggers is the author of ten books, including most recently Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, The Circle and A Hologram for the King, which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco that produces books, a quarterly journal of new writing (McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern), and a monthly magazine, The Believer. McSweeney’s also publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Eggers is the co-founder of 826 National, a network of eight tutoring centers around the country and ScholarMatch, a nonprofit organization that connects students with resources, schools and donors to make college possible.

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A Hologram for the King

Dave Eggers

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012

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A Hologram for the King

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Watch A Hologram for the King with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

A Hologram for the King amiably ambles through a narrative desert, saved by an oasis of a performance from the ever-dependable Tom Hanks.

Audience Reviews

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Sarita Choudhury

Sidse Babett Knudsen

Tracey Fairaway

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A Hologram for the King

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

And you may find yourself in another part of the world. And you may find yourself at a high-tech sales meeting. And you may find yourself looking at Tom Hanks . And you may ask yourself — well, how did I get here?

I’m fudging the opening lyrics to “Once in a Lifetime,” the Talking Heads song that Hanks recites to open A Hologram for the King. But that feeling of strangeness, of being lost and out of balance is the best that can be said of Tom Tykwer’s scattershot screen version of the 2012 Dave Eggers novel about technology in the global village. The estimable Hanks — no one plays decency better or with less rectitude — takes the role of Alan Clay, a business hustler on his last leg. Alan has lost his beautiful wife and his beautiful house, and he can’t even pay his daughter’s college tuition.

There’s one last shot: a trip to Saudi Arabia where Alan can save his ass if he and his IT team can sell the elusive king on their new 3D teleconferencing technology. There’s more than a faint echo of Death of a Salesman in Hanks’ 21st-century take on Willy Loman. Attention must be paid. Metaphor alert: a puss-filled growth is toxically blooming on Alan’s back. He tries to lance it with a knife. But symbols in this movie do not die easily.

Billie Eilish Would Like to Reintroduce Herself

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Eggers took a trippingly comic approach to this material on the page that also left room for a sorrowful subtext. But for Tykwer ( Run Lola Run ), the different tones don’t so much mesh as collide. He introduces characters from the book, including Yousef (Alexander Black), Alan’s comic-relief driver; Hanne (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a randy Danish consultant who offers him booze and an easy lay; and Zahra (the wonderful Sarita Choudhury), a Saudi doctor who might be just the ticket to connect Alan with life again. But the impact is diminished.

The major themes that rose naturally from Eggers’ clean prose feel shoehorned in by Tykwer. In flashback, we see Alan’s retired father (Tom Skerritt) berate his son for outsourcing American jobs again, like Alan did during his tenure at the Schwinn Bicycle Company. There’s no denying the ambition in A Hologram for the King, but a struggle does not add up to a satisfying movie — or even a reasonable facsimile of the beauty and terror Eggers evokes on the page.

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