Ply

Ply is majestic. A cracked mirror world, a lot like ours; peopled by survivors, a lot like us; sentences so fine they break the skin; a plot that swerves through loss, love, trust, betrayal, art, science, society and control -- David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas
Please, please, please put [Ply] on your list . . . I highly recommend [it] -- Sarah Jessica Parker on Instagram
Ply, like Trust, is a tricksy novel . . . delivers intriguing homilies on technology and ownership that follow on nicely from the themes of Trust . . . the most compelling thread is the one rooted in physics, which tethers Diaz to the present and launches him towards his most exciting ideas about the future -- The Times
An edgy, compelling novel by a writer full of invention -- The i Paper
Diaz brilliantly envisions how love, trust, and loyalty can remain when freedom and justice have collapsed and makes every page exhilarating and meaningful -- Library Journal (Starred Review)
A brainy, challenging, and engrossing trek into a battered but unbeaten future -- Kirkus (Starred Review)
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 -- Oprah Daily, The Best Books of Fall 2026
Ply is both a touching story of a young woman's struggle to find security and peace . . . and a mind-bending reflection on the nature of time and space. Either story alone would be satisfying, but Diaz cleverly marries them in an intriguing union . . . Ply is a big, ambitious novel . . .Unquestionably the product of a fertile imaginative intelligence -- Shelf Awareness
A fiercely intelligent look at the future of technology, climate and capitalism that will have you gripped – and while no one is judging, it might just be our favourite cover of the autumn -- Elle, The Best New Books for Autumn 2026
Evocatively portrayed and believable . . . Diaz's prose is as sumptuous as you might expect -- SFX Magazine
A page-turning, pleasurably disorienting, and deeply humane vision of a possible future * Vogue *
After diving into historical fiction with his last two novels, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hernan Diaz brings his unparalleled writing [to] the future . . . [The protagonist’s] journey in [a] dystopian future reflects modern predicaments regarding technology, identity, and control -- Harper's Bazaar
Ply is a wild ride that ultimately asks what survives when everything around us has collapsed. Strap in! -- Service95
It is a clear critique of capitalism and a warning of what the future could look like, but he manages to also make the world he builds feel like a playground of possibilities -- The Herald
Diaz has fashioned an immersive Dickensian-dystopian world of larger-than-life characters bearing exaggerated traits of good and evil . . . The best aspects of the novel are full-on steampunk; Diaz has created an enjoyable cacophony of sensory experience -- The Observer
[A] grand experiment . . . about what is lost, what is gained, and what possibilities emerge when all of our usual laws, societal as well as physical, break down. [T]here is something in [Ply] that wants to be reckoned with . . . startling and powerful and rare -- The New Yorker
The pliability of Diaz’s imagination is a marvel; his future seems plausible and even strangely enticing -- People
Diaz turns his formidable imagination toward the future in this audacious work of fiction . . . Diaz makes this battered future startlingly vivid. . . . [Raises] head-spinning questions about time, identity, and the boundaries between people. Ambitious and oddly hopeful, Ply imagines the end of one world as the possibility of another -- Apple Books, 'Best Books of October'
[A]n ambitious, science-fiction leap into a fallen metropolis where art and anarchy reign. It’s a cause for celebration when a great novelist publishes a new book . . . Ply is a sprawling far-future narrative of a life lived on the margins. Few writers have the ambition to make such a drastic shift [between novels] . . . For a book set so far in the future, it still manages to be a paean to a familiar phase of youth, culture, metropolitan living . . . [Captures] the transportive power of music, found families, and trade-based economy . . . [and asks,] What if, despite everything, you could create a community that is wild and anarchic and free? -- Los Angeles Times
[Ply] is full of lush prose, patient world-building, and deep inquiries into technology and identity -- Vulture / New York Magazine
[A] speculative epic . . . [with] a flavour of JG Ballard’s The Drowned World -- The Guardian
So compelling–and so frightening -- Times Literary Supplement
[A] futuristic novel that explores technology, connection, and transformation -- B&N Reads, 'The Best Fiction Books of 2026'
Hernan Diaz’s latest conjures a gritty, post-tech future as bleak as anything in Dickens . . . a vision of the future both deeply disconcerting and oddly exhilarating . . . narrated by an unnamed young woman whose voice is so fresh, vulnerable, and searching that we are immediately invested . . . [Features an] uncanny and vibrantly imagined world . . . [and] the fresh and vital voice of the pincher . . . [A] testament to the surpassing importance of the human voice, artistic fecundity, improvisation, and ingenuity -- Boston Globe