In the new novel by Hanya Yanagihara, author of the bestsellers 'A Little Life' and 'People Among the Trees,' the action unfolds across three timelines. The first is an alternate America at the end of the 19th century. A young man from an influential family becomes the heir to an enviable fortune and is about to enter into a marriage that will cement his position in society. But a sudden, powerful feeling threatens to ruin all these plans. The second part is set in 1993. A young Hawaiian works as an office clerk, hiding his noble origins and the complicated relationship with his father that haunts him. The events of 2093 begin with a nighttime house search, and the protagonist, the granddaughter of a renowned scientist, tries to find her place in a world of constant epidemics and total control. The characters' destinies are strangely linked across time (and not just by the shared setting of Washington Square); each of them echoes the fates of the others in some way, striving for a vague vision of paradise that seems so far away and yet so close. This is a thoughtful and unhurried novel about love, family, loss, and how social utopias bring nothing but disillusionment and the collapse of ordinary human life.