Dissident Gardens is Jonathan Lethem's ninth novel. It is a multigenerational saga of revolutionaries and activists, the civil rights movement and the counterculture, from the 1930s Communists to the 2010s Occupy movement, and is mostly set in Sunnyside Gardens, Queens and in Greenwich Village. The title is an obvious play on "Sunnyside Gardens". Later, a character in East Germany writes to his American daughter, describing his workplace: