Beginning Middle End

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2026

‘Mind-expanding and heart-expanding; A summer book for life’ ALI SMITH

‘An instant classic’ SERVICE95

‘A stunning shape-shifting marvel’ MAX PORTER

From the award-winning author of Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli, comes a wondrous new novel about family, love and starting over.

All I had to do, or so I thought, was to answer a simple question: How do I reinvent it, the story, our lives?

A mother and a daughter take off on a road trip after the collapse of a marriage. Their journey begins in Sicily during a summer of rapidly-changing winds, volcanic rumbles and sudden tempests. How do you begin again, the mother wonders, if you got the beginning wrong? The trip soon becomes a quest for origins – not just through their family history, but also further back to a mythical and even geological past.

With her daughter leaving childhood behind and her mother beginning to show signs of dementia, the narrator finds herself at a crossroads. She must now ask herself: How do we situate ourselves deeply in the world while accepting our transience in it? How are a family's memories made and what happens when they disappear?

A road novel, a mother-daughter story, a radical portrait of starting over, in all its forms, Beginning Middle End offers an exhilarating testament to the power of the stories and the loves we hold most dear.

A hottest book of the summer as seen in New York Times, Guardian, Vogue, Elle, AnOther, New Yorker, Glossary, Town & Country and more.

‘What sets Valeria Luiselli’s new novel apart is its clarity, its immediacy, its vividness’ COLM TÓIBÍN, author of Long Island

‘An affecting novel for anyone … seeking their own new beginning’ FINANCIAL TIMES

‘A beautiful, maybe perfect novel’ TOMMY ORANGE, author of Wandering Stars

‘Dazzles on every page’ KATIE KITAMURA, author of Audition

‘Astonishing … a lightning bolt of a book’ DOIREANN NÍ GHRÍOFA, author of Said the Dead

‘Beautiful, funny and tender … I loved it’ EMMA HEALY, author of Sweat

‘Among the best books to read on holiday … beautiful’THEGLOSSARY

‘The kind of novel you wish would never come to an end’SPECTATOR

‘One of the country's most gifted novelists’ LA TIMES

‘Rich, lyrical and moving’ ANOTHER

What readers are saying ★★★★★:

‘Just about as perfect as fiction comes’

‘Intoxicating … the perfect summer read for someone looking for a book to get lost in’

‘Absolutely magnificent’

‘Literary fiction at its finest’

© 2026 Fourth Estate (Audiobook): 9780008804831

Release date

Audiobook: 28 July 2026