My fifth novel, The Memory of Animals will be published in the UK by Penguin on 20th April 2023, and by Tin House in the US and Canada in June 2023. It will also be published in Spain, Catalonia, Germany and France.

“From the Costa-Winning, Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of Unsettled Ground: a gripping, haunting novel about human need and survival, for readers of Never Let me Go and Station Eleven

Neffy is a young woman running away from grief and guilt and the one big mistake that has cost her her career. When she answers the call to volunteer in a controlled vaccine trial, it offers a way for her to pay off her many debts and, perhaps, to begin to make up for the past.

But when the world outside her hospital window is utterly transformed, Neffy finds herself abandoned – along with the remaining four other volunteers – in a future they never believed could actually unfold.

With a finite amount of food left and her sense that the strangers she is with may be holding back secrets, Neffy must decide whether she’s safer staying inside the unit or braving the unknown of the streets outside. While she weighs up her choices, she is introduced to a pioneering and controversial technology that allows her to revisit memories from her life before. Seduced by the possibility of being reunited virtually with her loved ones, perhaps the only way she will ever be able to see them again, her drive to leave the unit begins to falter.

The Memory of Animals is a taut and emotionally charged novel about freedom and captivity, survival and sacrifice and whether you can save anyone before you save yourself.”

Pre-order The Memory of Animals:

From the UK

From the US

From Canada