num_pages: 318
description: Wherever Hel looks New York City is both reassuringly familiar and terribly wrong. As one of the thousands who fled the outbreak of nuclear war in an alternate United Statesan alternate timelineshe finds herself living as a refugee in our own not-so-parallel New York. The slang and technology are foreign to her the politics and art unrecognizable. While others like her partner Vikram attempt to assimilate Hel refuses to reclaim her former career or create a new life. Instead she obsessively rereads Vikrams copy of The Pyronautsa science fiction masterwork in her world that now only exists as a single flimsy paperbackand becomes determined to create a museum dedicated to preserving the remaining artifacts and memories of her vanished culture.But the refugees are unwelcome and Hels efforts are met with either indifference or hostility. And when the only copy of The Pyronauts goes missing Hel must decide how far she is willing to go to recover it and finally face her own anger guilt and grief over what she has truly lost.
language: English
title: Famous Men Who Never Lived
publisher: Tin House Books