The Wayfinder

From the author of The Orphan Master’s Son, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Fortune Smiles, winner of the US National Book Award, an epic masterpiece named one of ‘Ten Best Books of 2025’ by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post

‘Awesome… This astonishing novel, at once so primeval and so sophisticated, pulses with the same hopes and terrors that first pricked our imaginations around a fire as the sun set – a tapestry of South Pacific myth, archetypal quest, political allegory, environmental jeremiad and feminist revision that feels both ancient and impossibly relevant.’ Washington Post

‘An epic of extraordinary abundance… modern and mythological… wondrous enough to endure’ Wall Street Journal

When a mysterious visitor lands on her island, a place so remote its inhabitants have forgotten the word for stranger, young Korero finds herself thrust into a terrifying and magical world. Her people are desperate and on the brink of starvation, and the wayward stranger offers them an impossible choice: they can remain in the only home they’ve ever known and await the uncertainty to come, or Korero can join him and venture into unfamiliar waters, guided by only the night sky and his assurance of a bountiful future in the Kingdom of Tonga. 

What Korero and her people don’t know is that the promised refuge is no utopia – Tonga is an empire at war and on the verge of collapse, a place where brains are regularly liberated from skulls and souls may become trapped in coconuts.

The perils of Tonga are compounded by a royal feud: loyalties are shifting, graves are being opened, and everyone lives in fear of a jellyfish tattoo. Here, survival can rest on a perfectly performed dance or the acceptance of a cup of kava. Together, the stranger and Korero embark upon an epic voyage – one that will deliver them either to salvation or to the depths of the Pacific.

Evoking the grandeur of Wolf Hall and the splendor of Shogun, Pulitzer Prizewinning novelist Adam Johnson conjures oral history, restores the natural world, and locates what’s best in humanity. Toweringly ambitious and breathtakingly immersive, The Wayfinder is an instant, timeless classic.