NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “An epic road trip [that also] captures the unruly intimacies of marriage and parenthood ... This is a novel that daylights our common humanity, and challenges us to reconcile our differences.” —The Washington Post

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

In Valeria Luiselli’s fiercely imaginative follow-up to the American Book Award-winning Tell Me How It Ends, an artist couple set out with their two children on a road trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. As the family travels west, the bonds between them begin to fray: a fracture is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet.
 
Through ephemera such as songs, maps and a Polaroid camera, the children try to make sense of both their family’s crisis and the larger one engulfing the news: the stories of thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States but getting detained—or lost in the desert along the way.
 
A breath-taking feat of literary virtuosity, Lost Children Archive is timely, compassionate, subtly hilarious, and formally inventive—a powerful, urgent story about what it is to be human in an inhuman world.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
THE WASHINGTON POST • TIME MAGAZINE • NPR • CHICAGO TRIBUNE • GQ • O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE • THE GUARDIAN • VANITY FAIR • THE ATLANTIC • THE WEEK • THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS • LIT HUB • KIRKUS REVIEWS • THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY • BOSTON.COM • PUREWOW

"An epic road trip [that also] captures the unruly intimacies of marriage and parenthood. . . . This is a novel that daylights our common humanity, and challenges us to reconcile our differences." -The Washington Post

In Valeria Luiselli's fiercely imaginative follow-up to the American Book Award-winning Tell Me How It Ends, an artist couple set out with their two children on a road trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. As the family travels west, the bonds between them begin to fray: a fracture is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet.

Through ephemera such as songs, maps and a Polaroid camera, the children try to make sense of both their family's crisis and the larger one engulfing the news: the stories of thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States but getting detained-or lost in the desert along the way.

A breath-taking feat of literary virtuosity, Lost Children Archive is timely, compassionate, subtly hilarious, and formally inventive-a powerful, urgent story about what it is to be human in an inhuman world.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST • TIME MAGAZINE • NPR • CHICAGO TRIBUNE • GQ • O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE • THE GUARDIAN • VANITY FAIR • THE ATLANTIC • THE WEEK • THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS • LIT HUB • KIRKUS REVIEWS • THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY • BOSTON.COM • PUREWOW

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
WINNER OF THE FOLIO PRIZE

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD 
FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE

“Impossibly smart, full of beauty, heart and insight. Everyone should read this book.”
—Tommy Orange, author of There There

“A Great American Novel for our time.”
—Vanity Fair
 
“Unforgettable, down to its explosive final sentence. . . . [Luiselli] audaciously stretches the bounds of storytelling.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Virtuosic. . . . The brilliance of the writing stirs rage and pity. It humanizes us.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“This is a novel that challenges us, as a nation, to reconcile our differences. . . . [The] writing shimmers like its desert setting.”
—The Washington Post

“Electric, elastic, alluring, new.”
—The New York Times
 
 “A remarkable feat of empathy.”
—NPR
 
“[A] brilliantly intricate and constantly surprising book.”
—The New Yorker
 
“[Luiselli’s] language is so transporting, it stops you time and again.” 
—O, The Oprah Magazine

“Like all great novels. . . . Lost Children Archive is unquestionably timely, [but] it also approaches a certain timelessness.”
—Los Angeles Times
 
“Stunning. . . . Uniquely rewarding—and even life-changing.”
—The Seattle Times
 
“Delicate, funny, effortlessly poetic.”
—The Guardian
 
“Passionate.”
—The New York Review of Books
 
“Rollicking. . . A highly imaginative and politically deft portrait of childhood within a vast American landscape.”
—Harper’s Magazine