-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Novel
by Muriel Leung
A dark and tender debut set against a writhing backdrop of postapocalyptic New York City.
Acid rainstorms have transformed New York City into a toxic wasteland, cutting its remaining citizens off from one another. In one apartment building, an unlikely family of humans and ghosts survives. Mira reels from a devastating breakup with her partner, Mal, whose whereabouts are unknown, while her mother is plagued by furious dreams and her grandfather, Grandpa Why, stakes his claims as a rambunctious ghost. Across the hall, the cockroach Shin, also a ghost. As the world around them worsens, each character must learn to redefine what it means to live, die, and love at the end of the world.
"Leung's novel strikes a satisfying chord, harmonizing joy and optimism with despair and melancholia. Surreal imagery combines with poetic prose to illustrate what life and love look like when crisis becomes commonplace and everyone is grieving―even the ghosts. At once absurd and profound." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Mesmerizing… a wildly original and disorienting rumination on love amid chaos." ―Publishers Weekly
"Poet Leung's polyphonic debut novel is undoubtedly strange, infused with a ubiquitous, desperate longing for connection, suggesting that creating community might be the only antidote amidst apocalyptic collapse." ―Booklist
"A moving exploration of grief and survival." ―People
"Muriel Leung gives us such elegance and tenderness and visions of loss and connection inside this broken world." ―Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade
"An astonishing feat of the imagination and the human heart, this book is a one-of-a-kind experience. A haunting and exquisite debut novel." ―Elaine Hsieh Chou, author of Disorientation
"A singular work of fiction: joyfully grotesque and ridiculously sexy. Muriel Leung's characters―ghosts, vermin, apocalypse survivors all―made me laugh out loud as often as they broke my heart. I loved it all, every single word." ―Jean Chen Ho, author of Fiona and Jane
This information about How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Muriel Leung is the prize-winning author of three poetry collections and teaches critical studies and creative writing at the California Institute of the Arts. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
If you liked How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, try these:
by Charlotte McConaghy
Published 2026
An enthralling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Migrations and Once There Were Wolves.
by C. Morgan Babst
Published 2018
A dazzling debut about family, home, and grief.
by Molly Prentiss
Published 2017
An intoxicating and transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and their shared muse as they find their way - and ultimately collide - amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980s.
Happiness belongs to the self sufficient
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
