Adam Johnson Releases New Book

In The Wayfinder, award-winning author and Stanford Professor Adam Johnson draws on the cultures and landscapes of the Polynesian islands to tell a story set 1,000 years in the past – with timely echoes for today.

The new novel from Adam Johnson, the Phil and Penny Knight Professor of Creative Writing and professor of English in the School of Humanities and Sciences, is an epic in every sense of the word. The Wayfinder (MCD, 2025) spans more than 700 pages and is his first novel in 13 years, since the publication of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Orphan Master’s Son (Random House, 2012), and his first book in 10, since his National Book Award-winning short story collection, Fortune Smiles (Random House, 2015).