The Subprimes

Karl Taro Greenfeld

May 2015 · Dreamscape Media · Narrated by Adam Verner

About this audiobook

In a future America that feels increasingly familiar, you are your credit score. Extreme wealth inequality has created a class of have-nothings: Subprimes. Their bad credit ratings make them unemployable. Jobless and without assets, they've walked out on mortgages, been foreclosed upon, or can no longer afford a fixed address. Fugitives who must keep moving to avoid arrest, they wander the globally warmed American wasteland. Desperate for work and food, a Subprime family has been forced to migrate east. They are soon joined in their odyssey by a writer and his family - slightly better off, yet falling fast. Eventually, they discover a small settlement of Subprimes who have begun an agrarian utopia built on a foreclosed exurb. Soon, though, the little stability they have is threatened when their land is targeted by job creators for shale oil extraction.

About the author

Karl Taro Greenfeld is a former Tokyo correspondent for The Nation. A longtime staff writer for Time, he is currently living in Hong Kong, where he is the deputy editor of Time Asia.