SHAMBHALA, a much anticipated debut literary thriller from New York based writer Matt Lombardi. It’s an incredible novel, in the territory of The Goldfinch or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and it really is a novel you will read in one sitting but think about for weeks to come. It’s completely original and inventive, often hilarious, full of brilliantly drawn and sympathetic characters, and asks some profound questions about the world we live in.

Nick Valentino—in debt, single and recently unemployed—lives miserably in New York. As a teenager, for one summer, he was the anonymous artist behind some of New York’s most iconic street art pieces – when it was still called vandalism. Art school brought him a glimpse of success, but the promising start has dwindled to nothing. He is completely disillusioned with art and the art world, and often regrets not going to medical school like his suburban New Jersey parents wanted. He was the awkward, studious one growing up; his brother Sally was the one for grand gestures and big ambitions.

Sally Valentino has been making a documentary film about the rebel uprising in The Democratic Republic of the Kingdom of Shambhala, the same country where Nick and Sally's father spent two years in the Peace Corps when the tiny nation was a peaceful hippie haven long ago. The South Asian country little known to Americans is now plagued by dictatorship and civil war, and Sally hoped to make his name showing the truth to the uninterested west.

When their father dies, the two brothers meet back home at the funeral, and the unshakable Sally seems a shadow of his former self. Things got out of hand in Shambhala, and Sally is now wanted by the US Department of Homeland Security.

As the feds show up to arrest Sally, Nick runs back to New York to escape the family drama, but several parties desperately want to recover Sally’s footage, and soon Nick finds himself entangled in a dangerous game of international intrigue, and sees no option but to head to Shambhala. Nick is ill-equipped for such a mission, and is soon kidnapped by Shambhala’s rebel army. Injured and held hostage, he idly teaches the young recruits how to draw. Seeing the possibilities in Nick’s talent, the rebels put Nick in charge of propaganda art for their cause.

As Nick’s inflammatory, persuasive and eerily beautiful images start appearing all over Shambhala, the world’s eyes turn to the region… and all hell breaks loose.

Matt Lombardi’s debut is an astonishing feat; absolutely gripping, beautifully written, outrageously funny, tenderly moving and a profound mediation on the nature of art, capitalism, and how far we go to impress our parents.

 

Matt Lombardi teaches writing at The New School and the City University of New York. His work has appeared in Details, The Daily Beast, Guernica, The Millions, and The Bellevue Literary Review among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.