First published 2025
Zelu's world collapses in a single day. Her university fires her, publishers reject her latest manuscript, and she watches it all unfold during her sister's wedding celebration. Back in her hotel room, unemployed and facing her family's judgment about her disability and failures, Zelu makes a desperate choice. She abandons her usual writing style and creates something completely different: a science fiction story set after humanity's extinction, populated by androids and artificial intelligence. The novel transforms her life in ways she never expected. Fame arrives, but so does controversy. As Zelu navigates her new reality, the boundaries between her fictional world and actual events start dissolving. Her story about post-human androids begins influencing real circumstances. The tale she crafted to escape her problems becomes the force that reshapes everything around her.
Genres: science-fiction, literary-fiction, speculative-fiction, contemporary, adult-fiction
Vibes: introspective, metafictional, surreal, thought-provoking, transformative
Tropes: art-imitates-life, meta-narrative, redemption-arc, unreliable-reality
Setting: hotel
Period: 21st-century
448 pages · Paperback · William Morrow Paperbacks
Content warnings: ableism, depression