The Threat
"Mr. Melvin Levin, I'm going to kill you."
The Threat
tells the darkly comic story of Melvin Levin, a middle-aged man who is dissatisfied with his dull and mediocre life. That is, until he receives a mysterious death threat in the mail. Terrified at first, Levin soon becomes accustomed to the threat—and then, increasingly, delighted with it, thrilled with his newfound importance as a “threatened man.” But as his obsession with maintaining this identity becomes all-consuming, he risks blinding himself to the twin dangers of the threat itself and—perhaps worse—his own deranged mind.
At once absurdist, moving, and savagely funny,The Threatis a timeless parable of the comic lengths to which people go to protect the delusions that validate them.
NATHANIEL STEIN has written humor and nonfiction forThe New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, andThe Daily Beast, among other publications. He lives in Los Angeles where he works as a television writer. This is his first novel.
