The Strangers

A transcendent novel from the bestselling author of The Power: A writer wrestles with grief even as a new species is discovered, forcing humans to reconsider what it means to share our planet.

"Powerful and emotional while being both whimsical and grounded, this wholly original blend of memoir and fiction will resonate deeply." (Booklist, starred review)

They came from nowhere, and now they are everywhere.

A few months after her mother dies, the novelist Naomi Alderman sets up a wildlife camera in the back garden of her parents' home. It captures the first image of a strange new animal. Low to the ground, about the size of a badger, flat face, long, trunk-like nose. Suddenly these "mimmoths" are as common as foxes or dogs. And no one knows where they've come from.

As Alderman negotiates the territory of grief--a place with its own logic and rhythms--the mimmoths spread. From the UK east and west, to the United States, to Russia, to India. They seem harmless, but oddly intelligent. They cannot be captured, they will not take food from humans, they have their own purposes.

Alderman cannot shake the feeling that she has a particular connection to the creatures. Or is she just succumbing to 'mimmoth psychosis'? As the impact of the mimmoths increases, she is pulled into the cross currents of conspiracy theories and global power struggles. Have her deeply personal forms of mourning lent recent events a surreal air, or is our reality changing drastically and irrevocably?

From the award-winning author of the international bestseller, The Power, The Strangers is a thrillingly original and devastatingly moving novel that blurs the lines between fiction and reality, inviting us to reconsider what it means to be human. It's like nothing you'll have read before.

Author: Naomi Alderman
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Published: 09/22/2026
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.88lbs
Size: 8.37h x 5.84w x 1.04d
ISBN: 9780316594776


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 07/01/2026 pg. 42
Publishers Weekly 07/20/2026
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2026
Booklist 08/01/2026

About the Author
Naomi Alderman is the bestselling author of The Power, which won the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as a book of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Alderman is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was chosen by Margaret Atwood as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. As a video games designer, she is the cocreator and lead writer of the bestselling smartphone exercise adventure game Zombies, Run! She is professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University and lives in London.