A tran­scen­dent nov­el from the best­selling author of The Pow­er: A writer wres­tles with grief even as a new species is dis­cov­ered, forc­ing humans to recon­sid­er what it means to share our planet.

“Pow­er­ful and emo­tion­al while being both whim­si­cal and ground­ed, this whol­ly orig­i­nal blend of mem­oir and fic­tion will res­onate deeply.” (Book­list, starred review)

They came from nowhere, and now they are everywhere.

A few months after her moth­er dies, the nov­el­ist Nao­mi Alder­man sets up a wildlife cam­era in the back gar­den of her par­ents’ home. It cap­tures the first image of a strange new ani­mal. Low to the ground, about the size of a bad­ger, flat face, long, trunk-like nose. Sud­den­ly these ​“mim­moths” are as com­mon as fox­es or dogs. And no one knows where they’ve come from.

As Alder­man nego­ti­ates the ter­ri­to­ry of grief – a place with its own log­ic and rhythms – the mim­moths spread. From the UK east and west, to the Unit­ed States, to Rus­sia, to India. They seem harm­less, but odd­ly intel­li­gent. They can­not be cap­tured, they will not take food from humans, they have their own purposes.

Alder­man can­not shake the feel­ing that she has a par­tic­u­lar con­nec­tion to the crea­tures. Or is she just suc­cumb­ing to ​‘mim­moth psy­chosis’? As the impact of the mim­moths increas­es, she is pulled into the cross cur­rents of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and glob­al pow­er strug­gles. Have her deeply per­son­al forms of mourn­ing lent recent events a sur­re­al air, or is our real­i­ty chang­ing dras­ti­cal­ly and irrevocably?

From the award-win­ning author of the inter­na­tion­al best­seller, The Pow­er, The Strangers is a thrilling­ly orig­i­nal and dev­as­tat­ing­ly mov­ing nov­el that blurs the lines between fic­tion and real­i­ty, invit­ing us to recon­sid­er what it means to be human. It’s like noth­ing you’ll have read before.