In this brilliant satire of our media-saturated culture, Las Vegas is to host a spectacle Bear v. Shark II. A basic question is being asked: 'Who would win if a bear got in a fight with a shark?' All of America is desperate to get a ticket but it is young Curtis Norman who, with an essay entitled 'Bear v Shark: A Reason to Live', wins a national writing contest and four tickets to the show.As he and his family head across the country, they are besieged by a dizzying barrage of TV and radio personalities, Freudians, theologians and more, as the whole country bets, debates, takes sides and argues over who is going to win. These meaningless exchanges leave Curtis a little disenchanted and world-weary and ambivalent about the impending event, but then he arrives in Vegas and finally it is the real thing.Uniquely literary in the vein of George Saunders, Rick Moody and Kurt Vonnegut, brilliantly clever and utterly captivating, Bear v. Shark is unlike anything you've ever read before.