"Nunez's prose itself comforts us. Her confident and direct style uplifts--the music in her sentences, her deep and varied intelligence." -The New York Times Book Review "A penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory...Nunez has a wry, withering wit." --NPR "[A] sneaky gut punch of a novel...a consummate example of the human-animal tale." --Harper's Magazine A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog. When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building. While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them. Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.

A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog. WINNER OF THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 'A true delight: I genuinely fear I won't read a better novel this year' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Loved this. A funny, moving examination of love, grief, and the uniqueness of dogs' GRAHAM NORTON 'Delicious' SUNDAY TIMES 100 BEST SUMMER READS When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unravelling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them. 'Very, very clever. Mature. Entertaining. Eminently readable and re-readable. Absolutely delightful' IRISH TIMES 'I loved it . . . It's one of my favourite books and it moved me' WHOOPI GOLDBERG A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 * A Financial Times 2018 Best Book: Critics Pick * A Buzzfeed Best Book of 2018 * A Bustle Best Fiction Book of 2018 * An NPR Best Book of 2018

**THE BRAND-NEW NOVEL BY THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER** A woman visits a friend with terminal cancer. Brilliant, strong-willed and alone, the friend, facing death, makes a momentous request. Will she accompany her on a holiday where she will, without warning one day, take a lethal pill to end her life on her own terms? Shaken and grieving, she finds the strength to agree. What follows is an extraordinary story - profound, surprising and often funny - of a lifelong friendship given the ultimate challenge; to witness its end. Utterly of our moment and timeless, What Are You Going Through is a deeply moving affirmation of life in its current existential threat and in its ordinary tragedies - the loss, loneliness, and the love that yet survives.

A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog - now in a stunning new edition as part of Virago's 50th anniversary Five Gold Reads series WINNER OF THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 'A true delight: I genuinely fear I won't read a better novel this year' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Loved this. A funny, moving examination of love, grief, and the uniqueness of dogs' GRAHAM NORTON 'Delicious' SUNDAY TIMES 100 BEST SUMMER READS When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unravelling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them. 'Very, very clever. Mature. Entertaining. Eminently readable and re-readable. Absolutely delightful' IRISH TIMES 'I loved it . . . It's one of my favourite books and it moved me' WHOOPI GOLDBERG A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 * A Financial Times 2018 Best Book: Critics Pick * A Buzzfeed Best Book of 2018 * A Bustle Best Fiction Book of 2018 * An NPR Best Book of 2018

An unforgettable novel about the enduring power of connection in a world of increasing distance, from the bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend 'I just adore Sigrid Nunez' PAULA HAWKINS 'When I open one of Sigrid Nunez's novels, I almost always know immediately: This is where I want to be' Dwight Garner, New York Times 'One of my favourite authors' NATALIE PORTMAN Three strangers are thrown together in one Manhattan apartment: a solitary writer; a Gen Z college drop-out; and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another's distress. Smart, funny and provocative, Sigrid Nunez's new novel explores the nature and purpose of friendship, love and art in our complicated current times. 'Nunez is unparalleled when it comes to tapping into the immediacy of grief, love, and exhaustion, and translating it - sparely, powerfully - on the page' Buzzfeed 'Long live Sigrid Nunez' LAURA MARLING

An unforgettable novel about the enduring power of connection in a world of increasing distance, from the bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend 'I just adore Sigrid Nunez' PAULA HAWKINS 'When I open one of Sigrid Nunez's novels, I almost always know immediately: This is where I want to be' Dwight Garner, New York Times 'One of my favourite authors' NATALIE PORTMAN Three strangers are thrown together in one Manhattan apartment: a solitary writer; a Gen Z college drop-out; and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another's distress. Smart, funny and provocative, Sigrid Nunez's new novel explores the nature and purpose of friendship, love and art in our complicated current times. 'Nunez is unparalleled when it comes to tapping into the immediacy of grief, love, and exhaustion, and translating it - sparely, powerfully - on the page' Buzzfeed 'Long live Sigrid Nunez' LAURA MARLING

The paths of two women from different walks of life intersect amid counterculture of the 1960s in this haunting and provocative novel from the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend It is Columbia University, 1968. Ann Drayton and Georgette George meet as roommates on the first night. Ann is rich and radical; Georgette is leery and introverted, a child of the very poverty and strife her new friend finds so noble. The two are drawn together by their differences; two years later, after a violent fight, they part ways. When, in 1976, Ann is convicted of killing a New York cop, Georgette comes back to their shared history in search of an explanation. She finds a riddle of a life, shaped by influences more sinister and complex than any of the writ-large sixties movements. She realises, too, how much their early encounter has determined her own path and why, after all this time, as she tells us, 'I have never stopped thinking about her'. 'A brilliant, dazzling, daring novel' Boston Globe 'A subtle and profoundly moving novel about friendship, romantic idealism and shame' O, The Oprah Magazine 'An unflinching examination of justice, race and political idealism that brings to mind Philip Roth's American Pastoral and the tenacious intelligence of Nadine Gordimer' New York Times

From Sigrid Nunez, the National Book Award-winning and bestselling author of The Friend, comes this mesmerising story about the tangled nature of relationships between parents and children, between language and love. 'A pleasure from the first page to the last' JONATHAN FRANZEN A young woman looks back to the world of her immigrant parents: a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother, who meet in postwar Germany and settle in New York City. Growing up in a housing project in the 1950s and 1960s, the narrator escapes into dreams inspired both by her parents' stories and by her own reading and, for a time, into the otherworldly life of ballet. A yearning homesick mother, a silent and withdrawn father, the ballet-these are the elements that shape the young woman's imagination and her sexuality. 'A forceful novel by a writer of uncommon talent' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

This "tender biography of a sickly marmoset that was adopted by Leonard Woolf and became a fixture of Bloomsbury society" (The New York Times) is an intimate portrait of the life and marriage of Leonard and Virginia Woolf from a National Book Award-winning author. In 1934, a "sickly pathetic marmoset" named Mitz came into the care of Leonard Woolf. After he nursed her back to health, she became a ubiquitous presence in Bloomsbury society. Moving with Leonard and Virginia Woolf between their homes in London and Sussex, she developed her own special relationship with each of them, as well as with their pet cocker spaniels and with various members of the Woolfs' circle, among them T. S. Eliot and Vita Sackville-West. Mitz also helped the Woolfs escape a close call with Nazis during a trip through Germany just before the outbreak of World War II. Using letters, diaries, memoirs, and other archival documents, Nunez reconstructs Mitz's life against the background of Bloomsbury's twilight years. This tender and imaginative mock biography offers a striking look at the lives of writers and artists shadowed by war, death, and mental breakdown, and at the solace and amusement inspired by its tiny subject--and this new edition includes an afterword by Peter Cameron and a never-before-published letter about Mitz by Nigel Nicolson. "In short, glistening sentences that refract the larger world, Ms. Nunez describes the appealingly eccentric, fiercely intelligent Woolfs during a darkening time." -The Wall Street Journal

Simpsonistas: Tales from the Simpson Literary Project, Vol. 2 highlights brilliant work by associates of the Simpson Project: Joyce Carol Oates, Anthony Marra, Laila Lalami, Sigrid Nunez, and many others, including Simpson Fellows as well as young writers appearing for the first time in print. Simpsonistas is the anthology of the New Literary Project, which is committed to the proposition that storytelling is the foundation of a literate society: newliteraryproject.org. The New Literary Project promotes storytellers and storytelling across the generations, and across a tremendous spectrum: from incarcerated young men and women to high school-age students to creative writers teaching high school to distinguished mid-career authors. Simpson Fellows from UC Berkeley lead workshops for fledgling writers, Jack Hazard Fellows receive $5,000 in support of an ongoing writing project, and the annual Joyce Carol Oates Prize Recipient receives an award of $50,000 in support of a burgeoning career.

Georgette George does not know what to make of her brilliant, idealistic roommate, Ann Drayton, and her obsessive disdain for the ruling class into which she was born. A decade later, Ann is convicted of murder, and Georgette finds more complicated and mysterious forces at work.

A poignant, intimate memoir of one of America's most esteemed and fascinating cultural figures, and a deeply felt tribute.
Sigrid Nunez was an aspiring writer when she first met Susan Sontag, already a legendary figure known for her polemical essays, blinding intelligence, and edgy personal style. Sontag introduced Nunez to her son, the writer David Rieff, and the two began dating. Soon Nunez moved into the apartment that Rieff and Sontag shared. As Sontag told Nunez, "Who says we have to live like everyone else?"
Sontag's influence on Nunez, who went on to become a successful novelist, would be profound. Described by Nunez as "a natural mentor" who saw educating others as both a moral obligation and a source of endless pleasure, Sontag inevitably infected those around her with her many cultural and intellectual passions. In this poignant, intimate memoir, Nunez speaks of her gratitude for having had, as an early model, "someone who held such an exalted, unironic view of the writer's vocation."
Published more than six years after Sontag's death, "Sempre Susan "is a startlingly truthful portrait of this outsized personality, who made being an intellectual a glamorous occupation.