Chad Harbach will return to the world he introduced in The Art of Fielding in a new novel coming later this year.
Little, Brown will publish The Brightness in the fall, the press announced in a news release. It is Harbach’s first novel in 15 years.
Harbach, a co-founder of the literary magazine n+1, made his literary debut in 2011 with The Art of Fielding, which followed a group of characters at the fictional Westish College in Wisconsin, including Henry Skrimshander, a talented shortstop whose errant throw during a pivotal baseball game upends all their lives. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the novel “a promising debut.”
The Brightness will be set at Westish College and in New York, and will follow Pella Affenlight, the daughter of the school’s former president, and Pella’s best friend, Irma, as they navigate life at and beyond Westish’s campus. Pella and her father were both characters in The Art of Fielding.
“In stunning scenes and spectacular characters—each drawn with an almost superhuman vividness and humanity—Chad Harbach captures that specific, shimmering anxiety of your twenties when life still feels wide open, even as hard and irreversible choices start closing in,” Little, Brown says.
Harbach said in a statement, “The Brightness is Pella’s book, and that of her friends and lovers, as she strives both to put down roots and find transcendence. The world she moves through is a multifarious one, encompassing a sleepy college thrust into the culture-war spotlight, a sun-splashed wedding on Block Island, and a New York City of service jobs, glittering parties, and neglected second-wave art. I’ve been steeping in this world for a dozen years now, enjoying every moment, and I couldn’t be more eager to share it with readers.”
The Brightness is scheduled for publication on Oct. 27.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
