Description: "Lovely and haunting." - Wall Street Journal "How High We Go in the Dark is ambitious and intricately plotted. A beautiful meditation on the way everything in this world--no, in the universe--is connected. . . . The writing is beautiful and immersive, and at times hypnotic. It asks both the big questions and the small questions of what will become of us, and even when the answers are complex, there remains the bright beacon of hope." - Roxane Gay "Easily one of the best books I''ve read this year so far . . . Tender and dystopian, the pandemic novel is told in a series of vignettes, each exposing a different pocket of future society--and eventually connecting through characters and circumstances. Nagamatsu sharply paints a picture of society inevitably building industry out of grief . . . It''s an ambitious critique of late-stage capitalism, wrapped up in a series of family dramas." - Polygon, The Best Fantasy and Sci-Fi Books of 2022 "Sequoia Nagamatsu''s debut is beautiful and unsparing in its depiction of a world reeling from a climate catastrophe-driven plague. Though the universe these stories are unfolding within is undeniably bleak, Nagamatsu imbues his characters with a sense of cosmic hope and humanity." - NPR, 14 books that NPR staff and critics are loving the most so far this year "Haunting and hopeful story about grief, loss and the different ways we move on . . . Deeply moving." - NBC News "Moving and thought-provoking . . . You''ll be impressed with Nagamatsu''s meticulous craft. . . . Well-honed prose, poignant meditations and unique concepts . . . offering psychological insights in lyrical prose while seriously exploring speculative conceits. . . . How High We Go in the Dark is a book of sorrow for the destruction we''re bringing on ourselves. Yet the novel reminds us there''s still hope in human connections." - New York Times Book Review "How High We Go in the Dark is a truly genre-transcending work in which sense of wonder and literary acumen are given boundless opportunity to shine." - The Guardian (UK) "A small, slim gem, one that I will likely return to for the rest of my life. . . . How High We Go in the Dark chooses to transcend the chaos and anguish of our pandemic lives . . . to give us, in the tedium of fear and despair, a rare moment of wonder." - Nandini Balial, The Week "Thoughtful explorations of how the survivors process death and loss . . . Even the bleakest stories conjure up a memorable image, and often that visual involves reaching upward: to the stars, to a memory, or even just stretching your arms skyward at the roller coaster''s peak, whether or not you know how the ride ends. . . . ambitious . . . achingly poignant . . . an emotional roller coaster." - NPR "Sometimes a novel comes along that feels so prescient--so startlingly aligned with the happenings of the real world--it seems plausible that the author was attuned not just to scientific foreshadowing but to some divinatory reading of the stars . . . Humming beneath the fantastical, scientific and mystical imaginings of this book are quiet and tender stories of love, family and belonging. Although the glitter of Nagamatsu''s imaginative renderings was what first caught my attention, it was these personal stories that lingered. Set in the future amid a pandemic far worse than our own, this polyphonic novel reflects our human desire to find meaning within tragedy. To feel our innate interconnection with all things, to care for one another--strangers, even--during times of immense loss, to learn how to say goodbye, to make things of beauty, and, most essentially, to inhabit and tend a livable planet for all." - Scientific American "Weirdly wonderful and weirdly powerful, a book of speculative fiction so close to real life that its heart-stopping events feel almost inevitable." - Minneapolis Star Tribune "Nagamatsu''s novel isn''t about hope, but about how things change in the space between possible and impossible. Of course the one thing that never changes, even or especially in tragic times, is human nature." - Los Angeles Times "Fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven will love this spellbinding and profoundly prescient debut." - The Millions, Most Anticipated Books of 2022 "[A] searing literary dystopia. . . . Each character is intimately drawn as they grapple with a future that gives very little freedom to hope or dream. . . . It feels like an archive of personal stories about what the future may bring." - Buzzfeed News, 23 New Fantasy And Science Fiction Books We''re Excited About "Through an imaginative journey that spans centuries and worlds, Sequoia Nagamatsu artfully examines the resiliency of humankind and the drive for a brighter future." - Veranda, The 22 Most-Anticipated Books of the New Year "Nagamatsu''s imagination is boundless, taking readers from hotels for the dead to interstellar starships. Fans of sci-fi and post-apocalyptic stories, look no further." - Alma, Favorite Books for Winter 2022 "Impressive, far-reaching . . . Yes, this is a plague novel, a pandemic novel, one that both honors individual tragedy and asks us to widen our perspective--to look to the future, to the stars. The chapters, which feel like linked short stories, jump decades and centuries, imagining the long-term effects of the Arctic Virus on the world and even the galaxy, without losing touch with the smaller stories of the humans who must contend with it." - Literary Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2022 "Sequoia Nagamatsu''s How High We Go in the Dark follows humanity as it crashes, adapts, survives, and rebuilds over the course of centuries." - Bustle, The Most Anticipated Books Of 2022 "Exactly the white-hot missive of hope, humanity, and compassion you need . . . Each story is a marvel of imagination . . . Rich in scope and vision, with each nested story masterfully rippling across others, this is a visionary novel about grief, resilience, and how the human spirit endures." - Esquire "A celebration of the resilience of the human spirit." - San Francisco Chronicle "Those courageous enough to sit with the novel''s exquisite sorrows will be rewarded with gorgeous prose, memorable characters and, ultimately, catharsis." - Bookpage (starred review) "Sequoia Nagamatsu doesn''t just grant us access into the chasm of human experience; he plants a flashlight in our hands and invites us to explore. Here we all are, together, navigating the dark unknown. . . . Nagamatsu''s dystopian narrative is both prescient and cathartic, an intertwining of imaginative and compassionate stories that give voice and validation to our very real grief and longing, all the while limned with glimmers of hope, virtual reality, and stardust." - Cameron Finch, The Rumpus "Exceptional . . . Nagamatsu masterfully folds more conceptual dystopian stories--reminiscent of George Saunders''s early 2000s short story work--into the novel''s broader climate and pandemic fiction story line, stacking his narratives and lending a sheen of surreality to even the most science-heavy moments. The result is an appealing mlange of literary and science fiction, with rich, mournful language aiding the imaginative strokes. This work reflects the best of what short fiction can accomplish, sketching memorable characters and settings with economy, but Nagamatsu manages to excel equally in the long form, subtly linking his narratives into a handsome whole. If at the end there''s no denying the bleakness, Nagamatsu importantly resists nihilism, consistently finding beauty and meaning in the darkness, even at the end of the world. . . . A frightening, moving work about what it means to be human while staring down our own extinction. Essential." - Library Journal (starred review) "Moving . . . Sequoia Nagamatsu''s tender humor bestows a kind of weary acceptance on the time-skipping, world-tilting story, even as things get darker and weirder. . . . You''ll enjoy the ride." - Philadelphia Inquirer "There are shades of Cloud Atlas in Sequoia Nagamatsu''s enthralling and sprawling sci-fi debut. . . . An ode to human perseverance and the enduring nature of love. From an unlikely love story that unfolds at a theme park for terminally ill children to an intrepid grandmother''s attempt to find a new home planet for herself and her granddaughter, every storyline within this dazzling novel will touch your heart." - Popsugar "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 "Done artfully. . . . A heartbreaking tribute to humanity." - Entertainment Weekly, 5 Must Read Books "Both epic and deeply intimate, Nagamatsu''s debut novel is science fiction at its finest, rendered in gorgeous, evocative prose and offering hope in the face of tragedy through human connection." - Booklist (starred review) "How High We Go in the Dark is not a plague novel; it is an after plague novel. Sequoia Nagamatsu nimbly bounds through time, space, and species while tackling the question, Where

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