[A] dark political fable ... The novel proceeds along a series of surreal and absurdist interactions ... Solomon is at times too eager to spell out the meanings of his allegory...but the novel builds to a superbly bizarre Götterdämmerung, as Duma’s subterranean terrors come to the surface and utopia shows its true face.
This is, at its heart, a philosophical novel ... If the novel has a weak point, it is that the population of Duma (aside from Zelnik) lacks the resistance to political abuse that one would expect such refugees to exhibit ... Still, it’s a minor concern that’s largely eclipsed by Solomon’s point about the connection between fascism and art. With clear, muscular prose and a world that comes to life in all its strange detail, A Brutal Design is a strong debut from an author with something to say.
The prose is direct ... Like handing over oneself to a psychologically ending experiment ... It is the discomfort Samuel’s experience produces that causes readers to look inward and examine their own attitudes and behaviors.
Solomon offering a deeply pessimistic take on the uses of art under authoritarianism ... A semi-satirical, semi-fantastical novel ... The novel’s consideration of antisemitism suffers for its lack of grounding in space or time.
