Synopsis
Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Tree of Smoke – the name given to a ‘psyop’ that may or may not be hypothetical and mayor 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 ostensibly 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.
Details
12 March 2026
9781035091317Reviews
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.Geoff Dyer, 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 rideNew York Times
The God I want to believe in has a voice and a sense of humor like Denis Johnson'sJonathan Franzen
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 snakeThe Washington Post
