Pulled from the imagination of Hernan Diaz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, his latest novel, *Ply*, offers a layered exploration of America’s evolving identity through the lenses of technology and human connection. Building on themes from his earlier works—including his 2022 novel *Trust*, which examined capital in the 1920s—*Ply* turns to the future, envisioning a society shaped by a collapse of democratic order and traditional human paradigms.

Set several centuries ahead, *Ply* depicts a world where legal frameworks and social mobility have given way to rigid caste structures, declining literacy, and reduced life expectancy. The novel’s unnamed protagonist, an orphan known as the “pincher,” operates on the fringes of this society by stealing electricity to power underground concerts, which serve as a form of currency. When approached by an older woman to assist in powering a particle accelerator designed to fold space-time, the narrative delves into theoretical physics with careful attention to plausibility—Diaz spent time at CERN to research the concept.

Despite its futuristic setting, Diaz resists labeling *Ply* as dystopian or post-apocalyptic. Instead, the novel is framed as signifying an end to historical paradigms like the Renaissance or Enlightenment, while gesturing toward the emergence of a new social order. Diaz rejects what he calls the “morbid pleasure” of imagining doom, emphasizing the ethical responsibility of novelists to envision possibilities for improvement rather than despair.

Diaz’s background informs much of the novel’s intellectual and stylistic approach. Born in Argentina and having lived in Sweden and the United States, he is influenced by a variety of cultural and linguistic traditions. His mastery of English is evident in *Ply*’s shifting narrative perspectives and grammatical intricacies, with the second part of the novel employing changes in point of view and tense to interrogate concepts of consciousness and political identity.

Thematically, *Ply* explores the collapse of individual selfhood amid technological and societal transformation, proposing the tentative hope for a new form of ethical anarchy—a disciplined yet self-regulated mode of sociability. Diaz draws parallels between music and science as tools for uncovering deeper truths about existence, reflecting his personal history as a professional jazz saxophonist and his enduring interest in post-punk and other musical genres.

Diaz credits his residency at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute for influencing the novel’s focus on connection and subjectivity. He views these philosophical inquiries as intrinsically linked to political change, challenging perspectives that dismiss literature and critical thought as secondary to structural dynamics.

With *Ply*, Hernan Diaz delivers a complex narrative that blends intellectual rigor, aesthetic experimentation, and speculative insight, inviting readers to reconsider the nature of the self and the collective in a rapidly transforming world. The novel is published by Picador/Riverhead.