He attended Bard College, and earned a graduate degree from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

[4] Set in an unnamed city, the novel follows file clerk Charles Unwin as he attempts to solve a mystery involving a missing detective and a criminal mastermind operating through people's dreams.

Critics have noted that The Manual of Detection combines elements from several genres of fiction, including mystery and fantasy.

[6] The New Yorker called it “the kind of mannered fantasy that might result if Wes Anderson were to adapt Kafka.”[7] A reviewer for The Observer compared it to The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, and described it as “imaginative, fantastical, sometimes inexplicable, labyrinthine and ingenious.”[8] An abridged version of the novel, read by Toby Jones, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in January 2013.

He has taught at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and he currently teaches at Bard College.