A dark, indelible epic about the other side of the American Dream

Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Tree of Smoke – the name given to a ‘psyop’ that may or may not be hypothetical and may or may not be officially sanctioned – is Denis Johnson’s most gripping, visionary and ambitious work.

Set across south-east Asia and the United States, and spanning two decades, Tree of Smoke tells the story of Skip Sands, a CIA spy who may or may not be engaged in psychological operations against the Viet Cong. Skating across Vietnam, the Philippines, and the United States, Johnson takes the reader on a surreal, vivid journey, dipping in and out of characters’s lives to reveal fundamental truths at the heart of the human condition.

Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.

"An artist of strange diligence . . . Tree of Smoke is as excessive and messy as Moby Dick . . . It's a big, dirty, unmade bed of a book and, once you settle in you're in no hurry to get out." - Guardian

"Denis Johnson is a true American artist, and Tree of Smoke is a tremendous book, a strange entertainment, very long but very fast, a great whirly ride" - New York Times

"It will . . . get inside your head like the war it is describing – mystifying, horrifying, mesmerizing. [Johnson] has written a book that by the end wraps around you as tightly as a snake" - The Washington Post

"An epic of drenched sensuality and absurdly chewable dialogue, as though Don DeLillo and Joseph Heller had collaborated on a Vietnam War novel" - New Statesman

"A Catch-22 for our times" - The Observer