The Prankster

Name’s Pom Trager, galactic superstar and prankster. Never heard of me? How about Picasso? The pyramids? The 1960s?
All my doing.
Bigfoot. Area 51. The entire US political system.
Me. Me. Me!

To Pom Trager, humanity’s entire history is one big joke — and he delivers the punchlines, broadcasting hilarious exploits back to his home planet to boost the ratings of his reality show, The Prankster.

But when a system malfunction strands Trager in modern-day Santa Fe, his only hope rests in a nebbish assistant he recently fired, a headstrong human woman, and his ability to outrun a relentless sheriff hot on his trail.

Now Trager must hightail it to the pickup point in San Francisco, all the while dealing with car thieves, time loops, all-American truck stop food — and a rapidly closing rescue window that could leave him trapped forever in a backwater world of his own making.

“Polster fits somewhere between Hiaasen and Vonnegut.” — Publishers Weekly

Equal parts novelist, journalist, explorer, and movie producer, James Polster draws on his rich cultural experiences to craft highly entertaining stories with social significance. From profiling Indira Gandhi and Donald Trump, to covering the World Championship of Elephant Polo in Nepal, to navigating the Amazon River and living among jungle cannibals, Polster's adventures have given him a unique perspective on life that infuses his work with witty depth.

A graduate of Harvard and Columbia universities, Polster has written A Guest in the Jungle, The Graduate Student, and Brown, which received the Critics' Choice Award and was named by Publishers Weekly as a Best Book of the Year. He lives in Los Angeles.