Confidence

One of the Washington Post’s 50 Best Works of Fiction of 2023 - A New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick - One of them’s best books of 2023 - One of CrimeReads’ Best Crime Novels of 2023 “Two boys meet at a camp for troubled kids who need to turn their lives around—it’s not the slammer, but it’s the last stop before it—and they start a scheme that indeed changes everything. Is it love? Is it lust? It’s a good time, that’s for sure.” –People “Theranos but make it gay. In this Ripley-esque romp, two men—occasional lovers—create a fake empire based entirely on their own charisma and an impossibly auspicious wellness product that promises bliss to those who use it.”—Electric Literature “Frumkin follows up his critically acclaimed debut The Comedown with Confidence, a biting satire about a pair of friends who start a company that promises consumers instant enlightenment for the rest of their lives…. Over the course of the novel, as their hustles become increasingly complex, they veer closer and closer to a massive collapse from which they may never recover.”—New York Magazine’s Vulture

Rafael Frumkin is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Medill School of Journalism. His first novel, The Comedown, was published by Henry Holt in 2018, and his second novel, Confidence, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2023. He lives with his partner, two cats, and one dog in Carbondale, Illinois, where he is an assistant professor of creative writing at Southern Illinois University.