The Threat tells the darkly comic story of Melvin Levin, a middle-aged man who is dissatisfied with his dull and mediocre lifeThat is, until he receives a mysterious death threat in the mail. Terrified at first, Levin soon becomes accustomed to the threat—and then, increasingly, delighted with it, thrilled with his newfound importance as a “threatened man.” But as his obsession with maintaining this identity becomes all-consuming, he risks blinding himself to the twin dangers of the threat itself and—perhaps worse—his own deranged mind.

At once absurdist, moving, and savagely funny, The Threat is a timeless parable of the comic lengths to which people go to protect the delusions that validate them.