Ply: A Novel by Hernan Diaz

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Trust turns to the future with a novel that examines the place of technology in the American imagination

Centuries from now, at the dawn of a historical epoch filled with both uncertainty and promise, an orphan is adrift in a city on the brink of a great transformation. The state has been dismantled, and humans are reinventing social bonds and learning new ways to coexist with nature. Following a childhood defined by loss, survival, and found family, the orphan grows up to become a “pincher,” someone who steals electricity from the grid to sell it on the black market. It’s a high-risk life, one that brings her into a rich art and music scene where she powers underground concerts. It also leads her to a colossal scientific invention that could change the very fabric of reality.

After rewriting America’s past with his two previous novels, Hernan Diaz defies expectations with his third and gives us a breathtaking glimpse into the future. A major achievement from a major contemporary writer, Ply questions the place of technology in the American experiment with a plot that grabs both heart and mind. It is a novel of ideas built from a story of people. Combining Dickensian odyssey, family drama, and scientific thriller, Ply poignantly charts the tenuous boundaries of selfhood and the distance that inevitably stands between us and those we love.

REVIEWS

“Offers us a vision of the future both deeply disconcerting and oddly exhilarating...a testament to the surpassing importance of the human voice, artistic fecundity, improvisation, and ingenuity.”—Boston Globe

“With the transportive power of music, found families and trade-based economy, Ply resonates with the founding ideas of Burning Man. What if, despite everything, you could create a community that is wild and anarchic and free?”—Los Angeles Times

“Diaz is juggling an ambitious plot and thorny philosophical questions, yet the novel remains compulsively readable, carried along by intricate worldbuilding and strangely gorgeous evocations of ruin.... By the novel’s end you will believe, like our heroine, ‘that the cracks and fissures in every building and street [are] the sign of something wonderful hatching.’” —Oprah Daily

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Riverhead Books
ISBN: 978-0593719541
Pages: 463