We are very excited to share the news that MCD/FSG will be publishing The Wayfinder, the new novel by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner writer Adam Johnson (!!!), author of The Orphan Master’s Son and other great books.
The Wayfinder is a truly epic novel set in the Polynesian islands of the south Pacific at the height of Tu’i Tonga Empire. The novel tells the story of young Kōrero, a girl chosen to, hopefully, save her people by taking leave of her remote, starving island home on a seafaring voyage to the heart of a vast ocean empire whose dominion is predicated on consumption, blood, and brutality.
A colossal literary achievement written in the tradition of immersive masterworks like Wolf Hall, Shogun, even War and Peace that also conjures the lost art of oral storytelling and a world as yet untouched by Western influence, The Wayfinder spins grand adventure—you can’t quite call it swashbuckling because this is world of outrigger canoes and celestial navigation—against the backdrop of the vast Pacific and the history of the Tongans, while exploring the themes of indigeneity, ecological sustainability, and humanity in the face of deprivation that have long occupied Johnson as a novelist.
As Johnson writes, “While Tahitians speak French and Hawaiians speak English, Tongans speak Tongan. Because Tonga was never colonized, its language and culture are largely intact. If only the same could be said of the indigenous cultures of North America. I’m an enrolled member of South Dakota’s Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, yet I’ve always grappled with that heritage…What is my cultural inheritance? Is there a legacy? Not a word of Sioux came down to me. Filling these silences with researched and recovered narrative is why I write.”
Sean McDonald, publisher of MCD/FSG, had this to say: “It’s no secret that Adam Johnson is a crazy genius - his short stories are simply dazzling, and The Orphan Master’s Son is one of the greatest, boldest novels of the 21 century, no question. The Wayfinder is even more spectacular, immersive, and mind-blowing. I couldn’t be more thrilled that Adam’s choosing to publish it with MCD/FSG.”
Mind-blowing is right.
And here’s Johnson’s official, overwhelming bio: Adam Johnson is the author of Fortune Smiles, winner of the National Book Award and the Story Prize, and The Orphan Master’s Son, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the California Book Award. Johnson’s other awards include a Holtzbrinck Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Stegner Fellowship; he was also a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award. His previous books are Emporium, a short story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us. Johnson was born in South Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. He now lives in San Francisco with his wife and children and teaches creative writing at Stanford University.
Look out for The Wayfinder in fall 2025! Join us in getting excited now…if you haven’t read it yet, The Orphan Master’s Son is a great place to start. Paywalls abound, naturally, but these two short stories in Granta are phenomenal. Or you could start with this Q&A in the The New York Times when Adam was still reeling from winning the National Book Award for Fortune Smiles. Come for the wisdom and charm and starry-eyed Don Delillo, Jennifer Egan, and Ta Nehisi Coates shout-outs and stay for the author photo…
