First published 2008
Benjamin Button enters the world as a seventy-year-old man, shocking his wealthy Baltimore family. As he physically regresses while aging chronologically, he navigates an impossible life trajectory—growing more youthful while everyone around him ages normally. His condition challenges every social expectation, forcing him to experience relationships, career, and intimacy through a lens of perpetual biological contradiction. Button's strange existence becomes a profound meditation on time, mortality, and human connection, revealing how our physical state shapes our understanding of self and society.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, literary-fiction, 20th-century
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, impossible-life
Setting: New York
Period: 20th-century
202 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books Ltd