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. . . . By the novel’s end you will believe, like our heroine, ‘that the cracks and fissures in every building and street [are] the sign of something wonderful hatching.‘
—Oprah Daily
Square Books is honored to welcome the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hernan Diaz for his first ever visit to Oxford. He will be in conversation with Mississippi author Snowden Wright for his new novel Ply on Tuesday, October 13 at 6 pm at Off Square Books.
Hernan Diaz is widely recognized as one of America’s foremost contemporary fiction writers. Ply is his third novel, and his first since winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 for Trust. That novel, described by the New York Times as “intricate, cunning, and consistently surprising”, also won the Kirkus Prize and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. It was also named a best book of the year by over 30 publications and Barack Obama, and a best book of the 21st century by the New York Times. His debut novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018, and won multiple awards including the Saroyan International Prize.
Ply, released on September 29, questions the place of technology in the American experiment with a plot that grabs both heart and mind. Combining Dickensian odyssey, family drama, and scientific thriller, Ply poignantly charts the tenuous boundaries of selfhood and the distance that inevitably stands between us and those we love. It was named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by over 30 outlets, including The Chicago Tribune, Time, CBS and NPR. Since its release it has received widespread critical acclaim, including from The Boston Globe which described it as a “testament to the surpassing importance of the human voice, artistic fecundity, improvisation, and ingenuity”.
About the Author
