Homebound

Six hundred years. Five interlocking lives. One computer game. And the many paths that can lead us home. 1983: a grieving teenager can''t wait to leave home. 2083: a scientist makes a radical discovery about the human spirit. 2586: a pirate captain navigates the perils of a flooded world. Meanwhile: an astronaut is on a rescue mission in deep space. How do these four pioneering women connect, across centuries, vast oceans and far-distant planets? The puzzle leads to a vintage computer game, an unforgettable fellow traveller and a quest: to find out what home means to them. Homebound is a coming out and coming-of-age story, a wild and precarious sea adventure, a space odyssey. Journeying through loss, creativity, found family, it asks big questions - and offers profound consolations - about life in this lonely, miraculous universe.

About the author

Portia Elan studied history at Stanford University and earned an MFA from the University of Victoria before returning to California, where she has worked as a waitress, bookseller, teacher and public librarian. She was a 2016 Lambda Literary Fellow and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and an abundance of cats. Homebound is her first novel.

Product details

• Authors: Portia Elan
• Publisher: Chatto and Windus
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 07.05.2026
• EAN: 9781784746162
• ISBN: 978-1-78474-616-2
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 156 mm x 240 mm x 40 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Science Fiction / General, Speculative fiction, Narrative theme: Coming of age, c 1980 to c 1989, FICTION / Multiple Timelines, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Relating to LGBTQIA+ people, Fiction: special features: game-related / LitRPG stories, sci-fi; star wars; dystopia; time travel; urban fantasy