Why Fish Don't Exist

A Story of Finding Our Way in a Chaotic World

By: Lulu Miller

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Paperback | 3 July 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
240 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.7 x 13.0 x 2.0

Paperback

$32.75

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The quirky and profound international bestseller - at once a life-affirming memoir on how to live well in a world governed by chaos, and a darkly astonishing scientific biography

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 2025: the profound and life-affirming memoir about finding our way in a chaotic world

'A sumptuous, surprising, dark delight' Carmen Maria Machado

'Fast-moving, deftly balanced, full of surprises' Guardian's Book of the Day

'A bold and original blend of memoir and science' Elizabeth Buchanan

If fish don't exist, what else do we have wrong?

As a child, Lulu Miller's scientist father taught her that chaos will come for us all. There is no cosmic destiny, no plan. Enter David Starr Jordan, 19th-century taxonomist and believer in order. A fish specialist devoted to mapping out the great tree of life, who spent his days pinning down unruly fins, studying shimmering scales and sealing new discoveries into jars of ethanol.

At a time when Lulu's life is unravelling, David Starr Jordan beckons. Reading about Jordan's sheer perseverance after an earthquake shattered his collection, Lulu stumbles upon an unexpected antidote to life's unpredictability. But lurking behind the lore of this mighty taxonomist lies a darker tale waiting to be told: one about the human cost of attempting to define the form of things unknown.

This is a story unlike any other you've read before. It's about a very tall man with a walrus moustache, the injustices and unexpected deliverances of the universe, love that strikes like lightning and about why fish don't exist after all.

Industry Reviews

'This genre-defying journey into the science of classification weaves memoir and history in shimmering prose' - Guardian

'I want to live at this books address: the intersection of history and biology and wonder and failure and sheer human stubbornness. What a sumptuous, surprising, dark delight' - Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

'Here is a book that hops nimbly between biography and autobiography, gritty science and lovelorn self-help. And its final, happy leap into the unknown is just astonishing' - Prospect Magazine

'Her book took me to strange depths I never imagined, and I was smitten' - New York Times Book Review

'A story told with an open heart, every page of it animated by verve, nuance, and full-throated curiosity' - Leslie Jamison, author of Make It Scream, Make It Burn

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