The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son comes a mythic masterpiece and historical epic about a girl from a remote Tongan island who becomes her people’s queen.

Talking corpses, poetic parrots and a fan that wafts the breath of life – this is the world young Korero finds herself thrust into when a mysterious visitor lands on her island, a place so remote its inhabitants have forgotten the word for stranger. 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 – instead, Tonga is an empire at war and on the verge of collapse, a place where brains are regularly liberated from skulls and souls get trapped in coconuts with some frequency.

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 splendour of Shogun, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Adam Johnson immerses readers in a world untouched by Western influence and evokes the lost art of oral storytelling, weaving a narrative of survival, self-discovery and the resilience of humanity in the face of scarcity. Toweringly ambitious and breathtakingly immersive, The Wayfinder is an instant, timeless classic, a profound meditation on both individual and cultural legacy.

About the Author: ADAM JOHNSON is the author of the short-story collection Fortune Smiles, which won the US National Book Award and the Story Prize, and The Orphan Master’s Son, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His previous books include the short-story collection Emporium and the novel Parasites Like Us. Johnson was born in South Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and children and teaches creative writing at Stanford University.

26 May 2026
 

The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson ISBN 9781761826016