Booksellers and critics have rallied around the novel. Publication rights have sold in 16 countries, often at heated auctions, a rarity for a first-time author. Barnes & Noble highlighted “The Nix” as one of the best new novels of the summer. Kirkus Reviews noted “hints of Pynchon” in Mr. Hill’s prickly social satire, which takes aim at academia, politics, publishing and social media. (Mr. Hill’s fictional social media app iFeel, which allows users to express their feelings by selecting one of 50 standard emotions, seems frighteningly plausible, as does one character’s Pleisto diet, which restricts him to foods that were available in the Pleistocene epoch.)

A critic for Booklist called “The Nix” an “engrossing, skewering and preternaturally timely tale” and compared it to works by Donna Tartt, Michael Chabon, Tom Wolfe and John Irving.

Mr. Irving, in turn, compared “The Nix” to works by Charles Dickens and other 19th-century masters.

“It’s an ambitious novel without ever being pretentious,” Mr. Irving said in an interview, noting that he couldn’t remember the last time a debut novel had made such a strong impression on him. “There’s a Dickensian range between stuff that’s genuinely sad, upsetting and disturbing with stuff that is genuinely comedic.”

“The Nix” centers on a washed-up writer named Samuel Andresen-Anderson, who, after failing to live up to his early promise, has succumbed to a soul-crushing job as an adjunct professor of literature in a Chicago suburb. To escape the suffocating sense of failure, Samuel spends 40 hours a week playing the role of Dodger the Elven Thief in an online game called World of Elfscape, where he goes on dragon- and orc-slaying quests with his guild.

He’s pulled back into his traumatic past when he learns that his mother, Faye, who abandoned the family when he was 11, faces assault charges for throwing rocks at a politician. Television news reports cite Faye’s record from her days as a 1960s radical in Chicago, which includes an arrest for prostitution. Determined to learn why his mother disappeared, Samuel enlists his Elfscape buddy Pwnage, whose savant-like video game skills have made him an online celebrity, to help piece together Faye’s history.