A book of creeping dread, where every worst thing is possible, and rational reason leads one to expect that the worst is not over. In The Parade, two nameless people work in a geopolitical wasteland for separate reasons: one to support his family, and one to get an exotic picture of what goes on in the world—neither of them possessing empathy for the people in the nameless country where they work. Dave Eggers describes himself as a hopeful person drawn to dystopian stories. He says these characters are cogs in a machine that is breaking the world.