The Husbands A Novel

A thrillingly original debut, THE HUSBANDS brilliantly asks how we navigate life, love, and choice in a world of never-ending options. “Brilliant, hilarious, surprising and wise. I devoured it!” —Naomi Alderman,  NYT bestselling author of THE POWER.

Thirty-something Lauren has been leading a steady, enjoyable single life: great friends, good job, and a nice flat in south-east London, until, one night, she comes back from a party to find a stranger in her home. His name is Michael. He’s attractive, sweet, and, according to him, her friends, and the pictures on her walls, he’s Lauren’s husband.

Just as Lauren is trying to figure out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael climbs up  into the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man climbs down, and a new, slightly altered life reforms around her.

Lauren quickly realizes that her attic can somehow—incredibly—supply her with endless iterations of lives and partners. Cycling through marriages—sometimes lasting weeks, sometimes less than five minutes—Lauren grapples with her fate. If swapping husbands is as easy as changing a lightbulb, when do you know you’ve found the right one? How do you recognize what’s good, or what simple happiness feels like, in a world that demands constant optimization with one more search or swipe left?

HOLLY GRAMAZIO is a game designer, curator and writer, originally from Adelaide and currently based in London. She wrote the script for the indie videogame DICEY DRAGONS, which sold over 850,000 copies and won the Indiecade Jury Prix Award; and she's worked on digital and physical games with Naomi Alderman, Lawrence Lek, Warner Bros., Tate Modern and the V&A. She has PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide, cowrote a book on games for MIT Press, and has written for the Guardian, among other publications. THE HUSBANDS is her first novel.