The Vivisectors

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026

‘A novel to marvel at’ SOPHIE MACKINTOSH

‘Astonishing’ MICHAEL MAGEE

‘Like Karl Ove Knausgaard at the end of the world’ SUNDAY TIMES

The acclaimed author of The Doloriad returns with a darkly beautiful novel following a reclusive graduate in a campus love story like no other.

In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss. One day, a campus scandal erupts: Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated conflict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination.

As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe’s boss instructs her to gather information by befriending Adam. Agathe soon finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth?

Coursing with icy suspense and rendered with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for a broken era and a novel of blazing spiritual reckoning.

One of the most talked about books of 2026, as seen in the Sunday Times, Guardian, Times, Observer, BBC, New York Times, New Yorker and many more.

‘Genuinely experimental, relentlessly and rollickingly told’ BOOKER PRIZE JUDGES 2026

‘Left me awestruck by its terrifying beauty’ HANNAH MURRAY, author of The Make-Believe

‘While there are echoes of Ottessa Moshfegh, Williams has a vision and energy all her own’ GUARDIAN

‘Part love story, part ecological fable … a bleakly funny study of ideological certainty’ THE TIMES

‘Williams writes with a gothic angularity that puts her in a category of one. She swims in deep waters and surfaces now as a major writer for our age’ PAUL LYNCH, author of Prophet Song

‘The anti-feel good hit of the year’ FERNANDO A. FLORES, author of Brother Brontë

‘Wicked and beguiling’ AMY TWIGG, author of Spoilt Creatures

About the author

Missouri Williams is the author of The Doloriad, which won the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her work has also appeared in The Nation, The Baffler, The Believer, Granta and The Drift.