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FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL POLITICAL FICTION BOOK PRIZE 2026 'Smart and subtle... You'll read it, then want to read it again' - GQ A writer returns to his college town, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor. But after he drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas's house with no recording device - a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich and impoverish our connections to each other, that store and obliterate our memories, and a moving exploration of the relationships that make us who we are.

BEN LERNER is the author of three internationally acclaimed novels, Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04 and The Topeka School, as well as several books of poetry and collaborations with visual artists. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, and been a finalist for National Book Award in poetry and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, among other honours. He lives in Brooklyn.