A Visit from the Goon Squad is a 2010 work of fiction by American author Jennifer Egan. It won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A Visit from the Goon Squad revolves around a large cast of different characters, various friends, lovers and associates, all somehow connected Bennie Salazar, an aging rock music executive and his beautiful, mysterious assistant, Sasha. The book the mostly self-destructive characters as they grow older and life sends them in directions they did not intend to go in. The stories shift back and forth in time, moving from the late sixties to the present and into the near future. Many of the stories take place in or around New York City, although some are set in California, Italy and Kenya.