The Big Chihuahua

Published by Rare Bird Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
LIST PRICE $28.00

About The Book

For readers of Gary Shteyngart, Jennifer Egan, and Nathan Hill, this is a literary novel with bite, heart, and a voice all its own.

When Emma Shapiro arrives home from college armed with a biting intellect and a playlist of protest songs, she expects a summer of healing with her enigmatic father. What she finds instead is a swirl of buried secrets, aging revolutionaries, Silicon Valley delusions, and a nation teetering on the edge of reinvention—or collapse.

Told through a kaleidoscope of voices—activists and CEOs, teenagers and truthers, ghosts of the past and echoes of the future—The Big Chihuahua is a razor-sharp, tender-hearted satire of American dysfunction. At its core is Emma: a daughter searching for connection, meaning, and a way forward in a fractured world.

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Daniel Ben-Horin’s genre-defying novel explores the legacy of the counterculture, the inheritance of ideals, and the urgent question of how—and whether—we might still change the world.

About The Author

Daniel Ben-Horin made his literary debut as editor of the Fountain Pen literary magazine of McBurney Junior High School in New York in 1960, but detoured in favor of a career as a journalist, early online flaneur, and social entrepreneur. He has written nonfiction for the New York Times, Mother Jones, the Nation, and other periodicals. His debut novel, Substantial Justice, was released in 2020. He attended Bronx Science and the University of Chicago, was fired by the Arizona Republic, edited the Arizona New Times, organized tenants and media workers in San Francisco and built, over the course of thirty years, a global nonprofit called TechSoup. 

Product Details

  • Publisher: Rare Bird Books (November 17, 2026)
  • Length: 280 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781644285855

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Raves and Reviews

“A joy to read?who can resist a mix of intrigue, cannabis, and fraught romance?”

Joan Silber, PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author of Improvement on Substantial Justice

 

“Raymond Chandler meets Jane Austen in post-Vietnam America. Excellent stuff.”

William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Barbarian Days on Substantial Justice

“A deftly composed and highly enjoyable crime story."

Kirkus on Substantial Justice

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