Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

This is the 21st century 'Death of a Salesman', and it is every bit as forlorn and accessible as it's prototype.
Our protagonist is Alan Clay, a 54-year-old American whose circumstances are because of his own choices, or bad luck, or a destiny he failed to see coming.

In the wake of the 2008 recession, Clay is a former upper middle class salesman whose job evaporated and whose income as a consultant has dwindled to an unsustainable pittance. He is divorced, indebted, and trying to sell his house in the midst of a housing crisis so he can pay for his daughter's second year of college. His vices are mild — he'll drink too much, that is about it—he's not degenerate, but he is desperate. He's got one last opportunity to close a major IT deal in Saudi Arabia; if he can pull it off, his commission will be enough to keep body and soul together, or at least get him back in the black. But we are skeptical from the beginning, because he does not exude success, and in this case he even does not understand what he is trying to sell. How did he get himself into this mess?  We do get a sense of that as the book unfolds, and we are at once sympathetic and happy to not be him.

The action here is subtle.  In fact, it is in slow motion. Clay waits. He waits for King Abdullah to come; every day, he travels to the remote, skeleton of an ambitious metropolis envisioned by the king.  He is not treated like a visitor to the king--that was his first clue that his chances of success are slim.  Although he has occasional blasts of a salesman's bravado and optimism, he generally believes that we are right--he will not pull it off.  This will not end well.  So in order to stave off the inevitable, he stays and he waits and he does not complain.

The novel is solidly constructed and elegantly told. This is sad, deeply sad--but in the end there is a strangely uplifting quality to it--in a kind of Cormac McCarthy way, but without all the evil and death.  The tone of this book is far away and somber.  Clay may not be like each of us, but he is an everyman whose irrelevancy can be seen as parallel to America's own.