A 1935 satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis is selling out online and racking up holds in libraries, It Can’t Happen Here (PRH/Signet; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Money reports “voters—shell-shocked by the results of the 2016 presidential election—are rushing to buy the book that Donald Trump’s critics say may have predicted his rise 80 years ago.” The novel is sold out, they continue, on Amazon and Books-a-Million.

Salon began writing about the book back in September, saying “Amid the 80th anniversary of Sinclair Lewis’s anti-fascist tome, Trump’s campaign makes Lewis look prophetic.”

The publisher describes the novel as “A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy.”

Holds lists are active at every library we checked some within a 3:1 ratio and others well over, even triggering re-ordering.

This is not the first time a somewhat forgotten work by a highly regarded author has found new readers. After 9/11, E.B. White’s Here is New York, written in 1948, became so popular the publisher issued a reprint.

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