Atavists - Stories

From Lydia Millet-"the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves" (Chicago Tribune)-comes an inventive new collection of short fiction. Atavists follows a group of families, couples and loners in their collisions, confessions and conflicts in a post-pandemic America of artificially lush lawns, beauty salons, tech-bro mansions, assisted-living facilities, big-box stores, gastropubs, college campuses and medieval role-playing festivals.

The various "-ists" who people these linked stories-from futurists to insurrectionists to cosmetologists-include a professor who's morbidly fixated on an old friend's Instagram account; a woman convinced that her bright young son-in-law is watching geriatric porn; a bodybuilder who lives an incel's fantasy life; a couple who surveil the neighbours after finding obscene notes in their mailbox; a pretentious academic accused of plagiarism; and a suburban ex-marathoner father obsessed with hosting refugees in a tiny house in his garden.

About the author

Lydia Millet is the author of A Children’s Bible, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten book of the Year. Her first work of short fiction, Love in Infant Monkeys, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010; her second, Fight No More (2018), won an American Academy of Arts and Sciences short fiction award. Atavists is her third work of short fiction. She lives outside Tucson, Arizona.

Product details

• Authors: Lydia Millet, Millet Lydia
• Publisher: Norton
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.05.2025
• EAN: 9781324074410
• ISBN: 978-1-324-07441-0
• No. of pages: 256
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Short Stories (single author), FICTION / Family Life / General, FICTION / Literary, Short Stories, Family life fiction, FICTION / World Literature / American / 21st Century, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary