The Wayfinder

From the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Orphan Master's Son comes a mythic masterpiece and historical epic about a girl from a remote Tongan Island who becomes her people's queen.

Young Korero has spent her entire life on an island so remote its inhabitants have forgotten the word for stranger. When a mysterious visitor lands on the island, her people are desperate and on the brink of starvation. But the wayward stranger offers a choice: they can remain in the only home they’ve ever known and await the uncertainty to come or Korero can join him and venture into unfamiliar waters, guided by only the night sky and his assurance of a bountiful future in the Kingdom of Tonga. Together, the stranger and Korero embark upon an epic voyage that will deliver them either to salvation or to the depths of the Pacific.

Evoking the grandeur of Wolf Hall and the splendour of Shogun, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Adam Johnson vividly re-imagines a world where history is story-telling and humanity lives in the embrace of the natural world. Toweringly ambitious and breathtakingly immersive, The Wayfinder is an instant, timeless classic.

About the Author

ADAM JOHNSON is the author of the short-story collection Fortune Smiles, which won the US National Book Award and the Story Prize, and The Orphan Master’s Son, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

His previous books include the short-story collection Emporium and the novel Parasites Like Us. Johnson was born in South Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and children and teaches creative writing at Stanford University.