New Millennium Boyz

Brad Sela is living an apathetic suburban life in his affluent neighborhood until two new friends drag him down a destructive path toward self-discovery.

“My favorite millennial provocateur.” —Bret Easton Ellis, NYLON Magazine Must-Reads September 2023

“This book is raucous, raunchy, and sure to offend, and there are readers who’ll appreciate those things. I will forever defend Kazemi’s ability to write this book and entertain his intended audience against those who’d torch all three.” —Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank and a dozen other banned books

Freshly seventeen and entering his Y2K senior year, Brad is feeling fatigued by the cookie-cutter image his new-agey Oprah-loving mom and corporate-Boomer dad expect him to maintain, so when the new transfer students, Lu and Shane, invite him out to the woods, he agrees to see what this Baphomet-worshipping goth kid and classic-rock stoner have to offer.

“There's no way a robot wrote this book. A no-holds-barred tour of the Millennial mindset's spiritual DNA. Anything goes.” —Douglas Coupland

Soon, he’s dealing with the delicate balance of a double life, forsaking old friends for his new ones, and secretly embarking on a journey of indulging his darkest impulses—even documenting some of their most dangerous and disturbing exploits on their Handycams. But as their hijinks increase and threaten to expose him, Brad is forced to reconcile who he really is or risk drowning in his downward spiral.

“There is some twisted shit in this book that will likely fuck with your head and break your heart. Remember Woodstock ’99, and how a sick, profit-driven media culture pushed boys to their worst impulses? Think Larry Clark or Bret Easton Ellis by way of Charles Bukowski or J.G. Ballard. These kids are not all right. Kazemi’s prose produces the same visceral response as an early Tarantino movie. Proceed with caution.” —Douglas Rushkoff

At turns hair-raising and harrowing, Alex Kazemi’s thrilling debut novel is an unnerving examination of the collision of traditional masculinity, the early internet, and irresistible pop culture that shaped the turn of the century and transformed the way boys engage with the world. The bastard love child of Bret Easton Ellis and Gregg Araki, New Millennium Boyz presents an uncensored and unsettling portrait of the year 2000 that never could have aired on MTV.

“I walked a path parallel to my own, and it was honest, authentic and awful. New Millennium Boyz is an intrusively intimate narration of someone who lived in familiar coordinates yet a different social stratum. That wholly un-unique alienation and emptiness is one that fills me with a nostalgia for a past that was, and was not, my own.” —Brooks Brown, Columbine Survivor and Author

“In New Millennium Boyz, Alex Kazemi dissects the post-Columbine generation with wit and a sharp scalpel. His characters are damaged products of their time. While this is a dark chronicle, there's also a cozy High School Confidential feel to the tale and the various media Kazemi employs to tell it, resulting in a compulsively readable novel.” —Poppy Z. Brite

“Alex Kazemi is a boy wonder.” —Shirley Manson