Joe Magee / Boston Globe / Illustration for Lionel Shriver’s subversive new novel, ‘Mania’

Joe Magee has been commissioned by Boston Globe to illustrate a review (by Chris Vognar) of Lionel Shriver’s subversive new novel, ‘Mania’.

Set in a parallel yet all too familiar near past Americans now embrace the sacred, universal truth that gaining an advantage through human intelligence is ’smartist’. Discrimination against purportedly dumb people is ‘the last great civil rights fight.’ Tests, grades, and employment qualifications are all discarded. With echoes of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain , told in Lionel Shriver’s inimitable and iconoclastic voice, Mania is a sharp, acerbic, and ruthlessly funny book about the road to a delusional, self-destructive egalitarianism that our society is already on.

Art Director: Omar Vega