Kurt Andersen is a writer whose fifth novel, The Breakup, will be published in August. His most recent books were Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland, and his work has been variously praised by critics as “ambitious and remarkable,” “dazzling,” “an absolute joy, “outrageously funny,” “stellar,” “a tour de force,” “a work of towering importance,” and “a great American novel.”
¶ He’s also a journalist, screenwriter and playwright. He contributes to The Atlantic and The New York Times, and was a staff writer and critic at The New Yorker and Time. He also hosted the Peabody Award-winning public radio show Studio 360, ran New York, and co-founded Spy magazine.
Coming August 2026
A penetrating and moving novel about a marriage cracking apart, set in a near-future United States that’s redrawing its borders.
Natalie and Asher’s 23-year marriage has long-standing fault lines over what they think of their fellow Americans and of AI-saturated modern life. In 2045, having survived the two-year civil war together, they’re living separately for the first time since they met. Millennial Asher is in San Francisco with their daughter; Gen-Z Natalie has retreated to her homestate of Tennessee in the Free American Republic. The couple’s relationship mirrors America’s own unraveling — confused, messy, painful, ambivalent, and impossibly intimate. Brought back together for a sprawling college tour with their 17-year-old, they find themselves on a road trip through a strange, uncertain new carved-up America, all while dealing with the flux — and resilience — in their own family. With the hovering question: What differences are irreconcilable, and when is something broken worth saving?
Ranging from tragic to comic to suspenseful, and brimming with imagination, The Breakup is a sweeping tale of the personal and sociopolitical intersecting –– bracingly plausible, keenly insightful, and surprisingly hopeful.