Beautyland

by Bertino, Marie-Helene | Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Published 27/03/2025 by Vintage Publishing (Vintage) in the United Kingdom
Paperback | 336 pages
128 x 197 x 23mm | 238g

A wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn’t feel at home on Earth.

‘One of the best books I have read this year’ KALIANE BRADLEY, Guardian‘A perfect little polished garnet of a novel’ New York TimesBorn at the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space, Adina is a baby of unusual perception. Tiny and jaundiced, she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognises she is different, not least because of her strange knowledge of a faraway planet. When a fax machine arrives at home, her suspicions are confirmed: it allows her to communicate with her extraterrestrial relatives, who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

As Adina makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and delights of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges her to share her observations with the world. Is there a chance there are others like her out there?Beautyland is a shyly joyful novel about real life on our planet, the challenge of knowing ourselves and the miracle of finding our people in this vast universe.

‘Beautyland is a miracle. I’ll be rereading it forever’ KAVEH AKBAR‘Beautiful and hilarious and transcendent . . . Bertino is an other-worldly talent’ TOMMY ORANGE‘A book that I will recommend to people for the rest of my life’ DAKOTA JOHNSON