Anjo Bordell’s debut novel Default chronicles one massive hijink told from both ends, hopscotching two monumental eras: the rotting rump of the American Century and the rough and ready kickoff to the Chinese one.

Raw deals and tough luck, shenanigans and hypocrisy, all overseen by a ubiquitous right-wing tabloid that drags the reluctant lead from the American South to an accidental enlistment into the Marines, to California, and then to Shanghai, where the two threads converge and boil over, sealing Bordell’s fate as his rent finally comes due.

Half expat novel and half Great American Adventure, Default is an inventive fusing of parts one and four of a sweeping magnum opus, the first and last books of a bombastic quartet. All-encompassing and intertwined, with distant, contrasting decades skillfully woven into a semi-autobiographical haymaker that will not be soon forgotten.

It’s picaresque, it’s satire, a kick in the pants to the heroes and institutions Americans hold dear. And what is America today if not an obsolete collection of slogans and euphemisms, pretense and nonsense? A parody of itself, a tabloid of epic proportions.

But the jingles and sound bites of American exceptionalism would have died long ago had the façade of this crumbling empire not been propped up by its colossal military. And what is the vanguard of this steamrolling juggernaut? The tip of the spear, the knuckles of the American fist? The Army? The Air Force? “The Marines!” says a wide-eyed Bordell. “The Marines are famous!” He has it all figured out.

Shanghai is famous too, by the way, only for reasons the locals would like to forget. Not so fast! With the release of Default, this lovely metropolis is once again on the map. Indeed, Default was meticulously penned in the confines of the author’s dingy Shanghai apartment. Amid falling plaster and leaking pipes, he resolved to present the world with this gift, this offering, as gratitude for having survived the meat grinder for so many years. This is his evidence, Exhibit A, a testament to his time on this infernal planet.