The Nix

A Novel

By: Nathan Hill

Narrated by: Ari Fliakos

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •

From the suburban Midwest to New York City to the 1968 riots that rocked Chicago and beyond, a novel that explores—with sharp humor and a fierce tenderness—the resilience of love and home, even in times of radical change.

“A mother-son psychodrama with ghosts and politics, but it’s also a tragicomedy about anger and sanctimony in America.... Nathan Hill is a maestro.” —John Irving

It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she’s facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel’s help.

To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye’s losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.

©2016 Nathan Hill (P)2016 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

" The Nix is a mother-son psychodrama with ghosts and politics, but it's also a tragicomedy about anger and sanctimony in America.... Nathan Hill is a maestro." (John Irving)

"There is an accidental topicality in Hill's debut, about an estranged mother and son whose fates hinge on two mirror-image political events - the Democratic Convention of 1968 and the Republican Convention of 2004. But beyond that hook lies a high-risk, high-reward playfulness with structure and tone: comic set-pieces, digressions into myth, and formal larks that call to mind Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad." ( New York Magazine)

"Once in a while a novel arrives at the perfect moment to reflect, skewer, and provide context for the world as we know it. This - now - is that novel. A satirical, fast-paced romp through time and space, The Nix is ambitious, wide-ranging, and full of surprises. It gathers force and momentum as it speeds toward the end, where all of its pieces fit together as precisely as a puzzle." (Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train)