Atavists
Stories
24 April 2026
Territory Rights — Worldwide.
Description
A fast-moving, heartbreaking collection of linked stories that evokes the joy and alienation between generations and classes in the era of mass overwhelm
From Lydia Millet—“the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves” (Chicago Tribune)—comes an inventive 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.
Reviews
"Millet playfully skewers Los Angeles liberals while leaving their social concerns quietly intact on the page..." — Maria Crawford, Financial Times, ‘Best summer books of 2025: Fiction’
"Although optimism is understandably in short supply, Millet delivers her doom with a generous dose of subversive humour… Millet has an excellent ear for dialogue, and her characters are endearing." — Mia Levitin, Financial Times
"Very few writers can make the apocalypse hilarious and sentimental." — Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday
"[Millet] knows how to put a story together. How to pace drama and consummate tension, when to turn up the volume and when to leave us alone with what she’s put in motion." — The New York Times
"All this tension, which Millet renders keenly and readably, is built and released in the face of immense and existential forces of undoing..." — The Los Angeles Review of Books
Also By: Lydia Millet 
We Loved It All: A Memory of Life
Paperback, 2025
This lucent anti-memoir from celebrated novelist Lydia Millet explores the pain and joy of being a parent, child and human at a moment when the richness of the planet’s life is deeply threatened
We Loved It All: A Memory of Life
Hardback, 2024
A personal evocation of the glory of nature, our vexed position in the animal kingdom and the difficulty of adoring what we destroy
Dinosaurs: A Novel
Paperback, 2023
One of NPR's Books We Love for 2022 • A New Yorker Best Books of 2022 So Far • One of Time's 100 Must-Read Books of 2022 • An Oprah Daily Favourite Book of 2022
A stunning new novel from the author...
Dinosaurs: A Novel
Hardback, 2022
The stunning new novel from the author of the National Book Award–finalist A Children’s Bible
A Children's Bible: A Novel
Paperback, 2021
A brilliant, indelible novel of teenage alienation and adult complacency in a world whose climate and culture are unravelling.
Ebook
9781324074427
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£18.98
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