Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Nathan Hill's best-selling debut novel, The Nix, was named the number one book of 2016 by Entertainment Weekly and one of the year's best books by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Slate, and many others. It was the winner of the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction from the Los Angeles Times and was published worldwide in more than two dozen languages. A native Iowan, Hill lives with his wife in Naples, Florida.
Nathan Hill's website
This bio was last updated on 09/01/2023. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
What is the story of The Nix and how does it inform this novel?
A Nix is a spirit of the water that appears in Scandinavian folklore and is variously known as a nixie, neck, nikker, nøkk, and so on. It's one of many Norwegian folktales I use in the novel. I love those old ghost stories, where spirits appear incognito and cause all sorts of trouble. In the Norwegian version, a Nix is usually described as a horrible ugly ogre-type thing that sometimes appears to young children as a beautiful white horse. It will attempt to lure the children onto its back, and if they climb aboard, it'll gallop into the water and drown them. And I imagined that, for the kids, suddenly taking possession of their very own horse would have been the coolest thing that ever happened to them. They must have loved it, until they realized what was really happening, by which time it was too late. The moral of the story seemed to me something like: the things you love the most can sometimes hurt you worst. Which is a lesson also learned by the characters in the novel, who are undermined by the things that mean the most to them: a son abandoned by his mother; a sister disowned by her twin brother; a workaholic swindled by his company; a gamer ...
Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels, including The Corrections, Freedom, and Purity, and five works of nonfiction, most recently Farther Away and The End of the End of the Earth, all published by Farrar, Straus and ... (more)
Nathan Hill's best-selling debut novel, The Nix, was named the number one book of 2016 by Entertainment Weekly and one of the year's best books by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Slate, and many others. It was ... (more)
We recommend 12 similar authors
Daughters of Shandong
by Eve J. Chung
Eve J. Chung's debut novel recounts a family's flight to Taiwan during China's Communist revolution.
This Strange Eventful History
by Claire Messud
An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history.
Only the Brave by Danielle Steel
A powerful, sweeping historical novel about a courageous woman in World War II Germany.
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.
