The Ugly - Softcover

• Best Book of 2016 Overall Grand Prize winner, CAC17
• Somerset Prize for best literary fiction of 2016
• Indies 2016 "Book of the Year" double finalist (literary, humor) winners TBA, American Library Association conference
• Best Books of 2016: Best Fiction, Entropy Magazine
• Best Fiction Books of 2016: A Year End List, Book Scrolling

"The Ugly is the funniest, smartest novel I've read in a long, long time." --Pete Duval  "Consistently hilarious...A bizarre but delightful sendup." --Kirkus Reviews [featured review] "Hilarious, intelligent, challenging, and entertaining...This decade's A Confederacy of Dunces."-- Clash Media    "Comedically absurd but also introspective...The Ugly is a globe-trotting tour de force that examines the complex relationship between words and actions." --Foreword Reviews [5 stars, editor's choice]    "[A] muscular critique of conflicts both intellectual and physical. A surprising treat." --Publishers Weekly "The Ugly is a bold and hilarious satire, a stunning debut." --LB Book Notes

"Laugh-out-loud funny...I definitely recommend The Ugly for fans of insightful law school satire." --Above the Law

"A full on satire of contemporary law as mesmerizing and complex as something lost from David Foster Wallace, yet as light in tone as A Confederacy of Dunces." --Goodreads

"Boldizar's debut successfully recognizes the chasm between youthful idealism and the reality it's often mired in." --Booklist
    "The Ugly is an ambitious, deep, hilarious work that exists somewhere between the real and the absurd. Boldizar is able to balance humour and deep meaning to comment on law, thought, and how we construct meaning." --Softcover  "Like a boisterous Borges ignoring the delete key or an angry Celine forced to write in a language he hates, Alexander Boldizar plays with our minds by mixing fact and fiction in The Ugly...Borrowing from every fabulist he knows he turns Conrad's Heart of Darkness on its head. Kurtz's "horror" has become Boldizar's "Ugly"...It's as if the Harvard Lampoon turned on itself...Kurtz has returned from the jungle and the horror is our institutions." --The Buffalo News, William L. Morris, Primetime Emmy-nominated writer (NYPD Blue)  "With a hero poised to go down in literary history, The Ugly tells the story of a 300-pound Siberian man who goes to Harvard Law School to try to save his homeland from an American lawyer out to turn it into a tourist trap. Intelligent and emotional, existential and comedic, the satirical novel takes on the irrational trappings of our supposedly rational world --Poets & Writers Magazine "Intellectual giant...A great book." --Kanadsky Slovak Newspaper
"An epic tale." --Vancouver Real TV
   
"One of the strangest, craziest, funniest, most interesting and most different novels anyone has ever put out." --Slovak Spectrum TV

"The Ugly is the funniest, smartest novel I've read in a long, long time; its protagonist, the inimitable and lovable Muzhduk, is a literary creation for the ages." --Pete Duval, author of Rear View: Stories 
"A wild ride that shows us the irrational underbelly of our supposedly rational world." --Gibson Fay-Leblanc, author of Death of a Ventriloquist and poet laureate of Portland "Alexander Boldizar's The Ugly, the hilarious and inventive and unforgettable story of Muzhduk the Ugli, is a work of kinetic absurdism infused with deep intelligence and feeling. A gift of a debut from a wholly original new voice." --Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me "Boldizar's new novel hit me like a giant knee-bending stomach-emptying boulder." --Stefan Sagmeister, author of Things I have learned in my life so far and two-time Grammy award-winning designer

"Seldom does one encounter a book that balances so much intelligence with so much heart. Muzhduk the Ugli belongs among the great heroes of fiction, alongside Bellow's Augie March and Dostoevsky's Alyosha. The Ugli is like a great professor entertaining with larger than life stories. It's only after you stop laughing that you realize how much you've learned." --Mark Powell, author of The Sheltering