Generation Desperation

‘Somewhere in the multiverse, innumerable possibilities are collapsing into infinite different realities. Am I happier in any of them? I still don’t know. The answer to that question is just one more thing that $1.2 million could never buy.’

In 2020, Alexander Hurst was 29 years old and broke, living as a writer in a cramped Paris flat-share. There were murmurs that a global pandemic was coming. Financial stability seemed unattainable, so far removed from his reality – the reality of the generation who came of age during the 2008 financial crisis.

On a whim, he poured his meagre savings into highly risky options trading. Within a year this small set of stocks was worth $1.2 million. Enough to turn his life on its head – but not in the way he had imagined, as he began a slow motion descent into losing it all.

In exploring Alexander’s remarkable rise and fall from wealth, Generation Desperation grapples with the vital questions of our age: what do class and status mean in a late-stage capitalist society? Can everyone really build the life they want? Or is there a cost to pursuing money above everything?

Generation Desperation is an urgent, unmissable fable for our times.

Author Biography

Alexander Hurst is a writer whose longform articles and essays have appeared in places like the Guardian, Hazlitt, The New Republic, Eater, the American Prospect, and the Caravan. He has an undergraduate degree from Amherst College, Massachusetts, an MSc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and an MA in Public Policy from Sciences Po, where he has also taught a first-year seminar on US politics. He writes a twice-monthly column about life, society, culture, and European issues for the Guardian. He lives in Paris.