From Powells.com
Our booksellers' favorite books of the year!
Staff Pick
My *goodness*, this book. Set aside any misgivings you might have about reading a pandemic novel during a pandemic. These gracefully interconnected narratives have their roots in familiar territory, but their branches arc and sprawl beyond the world we know into the far reaches of Sequoia Nagamatsu’s imagination. The result is an immersive, tender, life-affirming book that left me both wonderstruck and — much to my surprise — comforted. Recommended By Tove H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE - ROXANE GAY'S AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK - FINALIST FOR THE URSULA K. LE GUIN PRIZE
"Moving and thought-provoking…offering psychological insights in lyrical prose while seriously exploring speculative conceits." New York Times Book Review
"Haunting and luminous…Beautiful and lucid science fiction. An astonishing debut." Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen and V for Vendetta
Recommended by New York Times Book Review - Los Angeles Times - NPR - Washington Post - Wall Street Journal - Entertainment Weekly - Esquire - Good Housekeeping - NBC News - Buzzfeed - Goodreads - The Millions - The Philadelphia Inquirer - Minneapolis Star-Tribune - San Francisco Chronicle - The Guardian - and many more!
For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, a spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague — a daring and deeply heartfelt work of mind-bending imagination from a singular new voice.
In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.
Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects — a pig — develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.
From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resilience of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.
"Wondrous, and not just in the feats of imagination, which are so numerous it makes me dizzy to recall them, but also in the humanity and tenderness with which Sequoia Nagamatsu helps us navigate this landscape….This is a truly amazing book, one to keep close as we imagine the uncertain future." Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
Review
"In the vein of David Mitchell and Emily St. John Mandel…Nagamatsu's debut novel, following his story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, lives up to those lofty comparisons and then some with a feat of literary imagination set in the aftermath of a climate plague. A work ten years in the making, it's accidentally timely in some ways but it's also arriving just in time." Chicago Review of Books
Review
"As ambitious as it is intimate, How High We Go in the Dark is both a prescient warning and a promise of human resilience in the face of any odds. Sequoia Nagamatsu masterfully connects each slice of life into one epic and unforgettable tale, spanning centuries and generations. His debut envisions a future that is at once wonderful and disquieting, dreamlike and all too possible. It reaches far beyond our stars while its heart remains rooted to Earth, and reminds us that our wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of our world." Samantha Shannon, New York Times bestselling author of The Priory of the Orange Tree
Review
"A novel that is both grimly timely while also moving past our usual notions of time to reveal a wider view — Sequoia Nagamatsu allows his story to unspool with such a great sense of scope, freedom, and clarity, creating a stunning mosaic of experience and humanness." Aimee Bender, New York Times bestselling author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
About the Author
Sequoia Nagamatsu is a Japanese-American writer and managing editor of Psychopomp Magazine, an online quarterly dedicated to innovative prose. Originally from Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay Area, he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University and a BA in Anthropology from Grinnell College. His work has appeared in such publications as Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Fairy Tale Review, and Tin House. He is the author of the award-winning short story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone and teaches creative writing at St. Olaf College and the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA program. He currently lives in Minnesota with his wife, cat, and a robot dog named Calvino.