THE SYSTEM, Out Today!

My Novel of the Deep State

Thrilled to announce that my 19th (!) novel, THE SYSTEM, is out today! It’s available in digital and trade paperback, and though the audiobook (narrated by me) was also supposed to be here today, it seems there’s been some delay, which should be sorted out shortly.

If you’re in the Bay Area, I’m launching the book tonight at Kepler’s in Menlo Park. Swing by at 6:00 pm for a signed copy and to support your local bookstore.

What’s THE SYSTEM about? I’m glad you asked:

A riveting exposé of the inner workings of American power—as gripping as House of Cards and as fraught with personal dynamics as The Diplomat.

Valeria Velez has just pulled off a stunning upset in California’s 27th District, ousting ten-term corporatist incumbent Fillian Dunne from his seat in Congress. Young, beautiful, and idealistic, Valeria and her boyfriend/campaign manager Preston Jante are determined to use Valeria’s new position to “stop stuffing the maw of the military machine” and return power to the people. But when fugitive hacker Lance Thaddeus uncovers a top-secret Pentagon program combining artificial intelligence with nuclear command-and-control, Valeria might have to choose between her ideals…and her life…

And even while trying to navigate the unfamiliar pathways and temptations of American power, Valeria will have to contend with a mother still frozen by bitterness about the past, a brother jealous of Valeria’s future, and the ghost of the father who abandoned them all and then died before Valeria could even begin to understand his reasons.

But as Valeria will discover, in the world she has entered, personal and political can be meaningless distinctions. There are no solutions, only trade-offs, and as Valeria negotiates with the factions holding real power in America—Wall Street, the Pentagon, Silicon Valley—the lines between compromise and capitulation, savvy and sell-out, player and played, become increasingly hard to see, with ultimate stakes not just for Valeria, but for the very future of constitutional democracy in America.

The real-world basis for THE SYSTEM is documented in my extensive footnotes, which you might find interesting even independent of the novel. And here’s a bit more about the story’s origins:

The world you live in is just a sugar-coated topping. There is another world beneath it. The real world.

—Blade.

Before going on to make a living as a novelist, I spent three years in a covert position in the CIA. At the time, I had a typically skewed understanding of how power is exercised in America, both domestically and abroad. But as I learned more about how, why, and by and for whom power in America is really wielded, I began to realize that the world I’d always believed in was, as Blade put it in the eponymous movie, “a sugar-coated topping.”

Flash forward to the last eight years or so, a time during which the phrase deep state (or call it the military industrial complex, the administrative state, the bureaucratic state, the blob, etc) has become en vogue not just on the American left, where it first gained currency, but in the wider discourse, as well. To which my response is:

What took you so long?

And thus THE SYSTEM, which represents the culmination of all I saw of the culture of the deep state during my time with CIA; my understanding of the real nature of American power as shaped by years of obsessive reading, writing, and speaking on the topic; and everything I’ve learned about the craft of storytelling from over two decades as a novelist and screenwriter.

THE SYSTEM is something of a departure for me. For one thing, while the story has all the sex, it’s driven less by killing. Its fuel is more the crooked timber of humanity mixed with the kind of power that shapes all our lives today. In this sense, I suppose you could say THE SYSTEM is a bit more serious than my other books (though the Livia Lonenovels all deal with human trafficking—hardly a frivolous topic). Luckily there’s no inherent contradiction between delicious and nutritious, a case I once made in an article for NPR about Orwell’s 1984—a novel that can be read as a terrific thriller but is of course also far more. And while THE SYSTEM is certainly political, it isn’t partisan. In fact, I call it post-partisan, because it reflects my view that Dem/GOP and left/right are increasingly counterproductive ways of accurately understanding how power in contemporary America is really acquired, expanded, and exercised.

It’s been said that the best detective novels are about not just how the detective works the case, but how the case works the detective. Similarly, on a dramatic and human level, THE SYSTEM depicts not only what America’s system of power is and how it functions, but also what it does to its members—how it warps their outlook, their ideals, and their values the more they advance within it.

Or, to quote Nietzsche, “When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you…”

Valeria Velez is about to gaze into the abyss of American power. THE SYSTEM depicts what happens when the abyss gazes back.

I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Best,
Barry

* * * * *

“A devastating depiction of power in contemporary America, stunningly rendered through the lens of an idealistic politician determined to use her new position in Congress to make the world a better place—and who discovers that the first offering demanded by politics is principle, with far more consequential sacrifices to come. The System is as gripping as House of Cards and as fraught with personal dynamics as The Diplomat, and best of all, it offers us a view not only of the workings of the game it depicts, but roving access to the minds and souls of the players, and the pieces, caught up in it. I love this book.”

—Blake Crouch, bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion

“The System is the real deal: smart, stylish, and riveting. But it’s also much more: by subjecting Washington’s sordid underbelly to careful scrutiny, Barry Eisler performs a much-needed civic duty. At a time when American democracy is genuinely at risk, this is the book to read.”

—Andrew Bacevich, Co-Founder, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, author of The Age of Illusions

“In The System, Barry Eisler brilliantly demonstrates how the traditional left/right divide masks the true workings of power in America, crafting a work of fiction that paradoxically provides the most honest portrait of the country’s political reality I’ve had the pleasure to read. This book could spark an important public conversation—and I hope it will.”

—Arnaud Bertrand, entrepreneur (founder of HouseTrip and MeAndQi.com) and writer on international relations

“A searing, frighteningly prescient indictment of Washington power games and the modern machinery of the national security state.”

—Lee Fang, Independent journalist

“The System depicts a fictionalized version of the late US Empire—an economic and military juggernaut now in terminal decline as the regime and its institutions buckle under the weight of their own corrupt and corrupting inertia. With compelling prose, Eisler has written a deep political thriller in which the characters exist in shades of gray. They all must accommodate various governmental and private sector interests in such a way as to become complicit in a system so illegitimate that its true dimensions cannot be candidly discussed or explained in “mainstream” settings. Let us hope that entertaining fiction like this can help snap Americans out of their red/blue partisan trances and unite them against their real enemy—the oligarchic regime itself.”

—Aaron Good, author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State

“The charade of American democracy is well understood by Barry Eisler, and the cast of scheming characters in The System magnificently reflects the shadowy techno-feudal world that defines so much of our lives whether we consent to it or not.”

—Kevin Gosztola, journalist and editor of The Dissenter, author of Guilty of Journalism

“The System is a literary hat trick: a gripping thriller; a steamy love story; and a compelling depiction of how power is really exercised in America. In addition to his own CIA experience, Eisler has clearly done his homework on the incestuous workings of Congress, the Pentagon, and Silicon Valley, and his latest reads like a secret glimpse not just behind today’s headlines, but behind tomorrow’s, too. I hope we’ll see much more of Valeria Velez as she navigates her Faustian advance through Congress specifically, and within the system at large.”

—Ryan Grim, Drop Site News, author of The Squad

“Caught in the incestuous maze of Silicon Valley Big Tech and Washington DC’s cutthroat bureaucracy, newly elected Congresswoman Valeria Velez risks her conscience, political future, and possibly her life to uncover the truth about an ultra-secret Pentagon plan to reshape nuclear command and control. Demonstrating the exceptional knowledge of politics, combatives, and spy tradecraft for which he is known, CIA veteran Barry Eisler artfully weaves together a steamy love story and provocative commentary on the workings of American power. The footnotes alone were fascinating. I couldn’t put this book down and I’m already pining for a sequel.”

—Daniel Hoffman, former CIA three-time station chief and senior executive Clandestine Services officer

“The System is a rare and refreshing novel that tells the truth about government’s position within our society. Rather than a mythological force for good that is tragically corrupted by money, ideology, or authoritarian personalities, Eisler shows in clinical detail that the government is fundamentally a system of power and control that corrupts everything and everyone who interacts with it.”

—Scott Horton, author of Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine and Director of the Libertarian Institute

“Barry Eisler is a master of cut-throat crime and espionage capers, but The System takes on what might be the nastiest arena of all: the double-dealing and infighting of politics in Washington, D.C. Can an idealistic first-term Congresswoman outplay lobbyists, the Pentagon, and shady political “consultants” without losing her soul (and maybe more)? Sprung from tomorrow’s headlines and deeply researched, The System is a wildly entertaining page-turner as well as a cautionary tale about how national security policy really gets made—and for whom.”

—Stephen Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University, author of The Hell of Good Intentions