The Vivisectors

Missouri Williams author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers

Published:21st May '26

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The Vivisectors cover

Longlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction 2026

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026

‘A novel to marvel at’ SOPHIE MACKINTOSH

‘Astonishing’ MICHAEL MAGEE

‘Like Karl Ove Knausgaard at the end of the world’ SUNDAY TIMES

The acclaimed author of The Doloriad returns with a darkly beautiful novel following a reclusive graduate in a campus love story like no other.

In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss. One day, a campus scandal erupts: Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated conflict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination.

As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe’s boss instructs her to gather information by befriending Adam. Agathe soon finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth?

Coursing with icy suspense and rendered with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for a broken era and a novel of blazing spiritual reckoning.

One of the most talked about books of 2026, as seen in the Sunday Times, Guardian, Times, Observer, BBC, New York Times, New Yorker and many more.

‘Genuinely experimental, relentlessly and rollickingly told’ BOOKER PRIZE JUDGES 2026

‘Left me awestruck by its terrifying beauty’ HANNAH MURRAY, author of The Make-Believe

‘While there are echoes of Ottessa Moshfegh, Williams has a vision and energy all her own’ GUARDIAN

‘Part love story, part ecological fable … a bleakly funny study of ideological certainty’ THE TIMES

‘Williams writes with a gothic angularity that puts her in a category of one. She swims in deep waters and surfaces now as a major writer for our age’ PAUL LYNCH, author of Prophet Song

‘The anti-feel good hit of the year’ FERNANDO A. FLORES, author of Brother Brontë

‘Wicked and beguiling’ AMY TWIGG, author of Spoilt Creatures

‘Genuinely experimental, relentlessly and rollickingly told’ Booker Prize Judges 2026
‘Reads more like Karl Ove Knausgaard at the end of the world … sharply intelligent’ Sunday Times
‘Williams writes with a singular brand of Ballardian ferocity – she revels in the wretched and the craven’ Guardian
‘Grips you with an invig­or­at­ing sense of its sheer dif­fer­ence from any­thing else out there’ Daily Mail
‘Part love story, part ecological fable … a bleakly funny study of ideological certainty’ The Times
‘A compelling exploration of love, whether with another person or with God’ Financial Times
‘Astonishingly good … she has immediately left the realm of the cult classic … and has landed firmlyin the "best of her generation" conversation’ Defector
‘As brilliant as it is dark … unlike anything I’ve read before’ Vulture
‘Her prose folds itself into the literary legacy of writers such as Clarice Lispector, Anna Kavan, Rachel Kushner and Ottessa Moshfegh’ Our Culture
‘Williams’s eye for the absurd keeps things light and fleet-footed’ Literary Review
‘Moves between satire, suspense and philosophical inquiry’ Tank Magazine
‘This is the modern rupture – our crisis of meaning and spiritual malaise shaped into a novel unlike any other’ Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song
‘Exquisitely crafted and phenomenally clever … left me awestruck by its terrifying beauty. I can’t stop thinking about it’ Hannah Murray, author of The Make-Believe
‘An astonishing novel by an astonishing writer … I am in awe’ Michael Magee, author of Close To Home
‘Delightfully grotesque … The anti-feel good hit of the year’ Fernando A. Flores, author of Brother Brontë
‘A wicked and beguiling novel, written with the kind of precision other writers can only dream of’ Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures
‘Beautiful, disturbing … I adored this book’ Harriet Armstrong, author of To Rest Our Minds & Bodies
‘Hypnotic and sublimely disturbing’ Sara Baume, author of Seven Steeples

ISBN: 9780008725280

Dimensions: 222mm x 141mm x 30mm

Weight: 420g

304 pages