Passengers - by Alexander Maksik (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

OPRAH DAILY BEST BOOKS OF FALL 2026

"This is the stuff we live for--a spinning dream of a book, pure heart-in-your-throat magic. I can't say this enough: read it, today, now."--Paul Yoon, author of Etna

"A beautiful, unsettling novel about the depths of love, the burden of nostalgia and the maddening impossibility of translating feeling into language."--Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers

"A novel of surpassing beauty and among the most moving portraits of parenthood I've ever read. It also happens to be exceptionally funny, propulsive and wise--an example of the alchemy that occurs when a writer finds the work he was born to pursue. Passengers is Alexander Maksik's masterpiece."--Anthony Marra, author of Mercury Pictures Presents

A taut, emotionally gripping, and surprisingly funny novel about a father and daughter stranded in an airport at the end of the world. 

Ivan is a solitary man in his seventies, set in his ways and haunted by the failures of his past. His smart and cynical daughter, Nina, is in the twilight of her twenties and has long kept a distance from her sentimental father. But when Ivan proposes a trip to Europe in hopes that it will bring them closer together, Nina reluctantly agrees. They meet at LAX, where their departure is delayed. And delayed again. And again. As the hours drag on, their sharp, caustic and wide-ranging conversation reveals a lifetime of misunderstandings, unhealed wounds, and stubborn love.

Soon more flights are canceled, security tightens, airport staff grow evasive, and it becomes clear to Ivan and Nina that something is wrong. They begin to suspect that they're being held prisoner--sequestered from the world without explanation. At last, the surreal starts to overtake the mundane, and their need to escape--and to protect each other--turns increasingly urgent.

What begins as a piercing portrait of a father and daughter becomes a novel of eerie suspense, as Nina and Ivan navigate not only their fractured bond but also a world teetering on the brink of collapse. A story of loving across gaps--between parent and child, between things said and unsaid--and about what happens when the outside world finally mirrors the chaos within, Passengers is Maksik's most timely and accomplished novel yet.

Review Quotes

"I love this book. It is so crisp, so clear. It is philosophical. It is incredibly smart."--Lauren Groff, New York Times-bestselling author of Brawler

"Alexander Maksik's eerie and elegant fifth novel traverses underexplored territories of family love and lore."--Eleanor Henderson, The New York Times Book Review

"Quietly surreal."--The New Yorker

"We don't know if we've ever read a father-daughter bond written with more tenderness, complexity, or accuracy than in this slim novel about an interminably delayed flight... When inconvenience begins shading into apocalypse, this intimate portrait expands into a moving case for loving fully in the wake of a complicated past and the face of an uncertain future."--Oprah Daily, Best Books of Fall 2026

"Tensions wax and wane, along with a creeping dread that something has gone wrong. Comparisons with Cormac McCarthy's The Road will follow but Maksik's work is laced with humour and arguably more subtle."--Monocle

"Maksik turns an awkward family reunion into an increasingly surreal end-of-the-world story."--The Globe & Mail

"Maksik's best to date. Passengers is really about how we're all trying to get somewhere different, somewhere better--to a place where we can be closer to those we love, during this one precious life we have. I could not put it down."--Adam Ross, author of Playworld

"Passengers is a tour de force that reveals just how deeply two ordinary people can love one another...This superb novel takes on the very hardest stuff of life and never looks away."--Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

"Passengers is propulsive and fierce and uncompromising in its humanity. And funny too...It's kept me intensely good company these past few weeks."--Peter Orner, author of The Gossip Columnist's Daughter

PRAISE FOR ALEXANDER MAKSIK'S PREVIOUS NOVELS

You Deserve Nothing (2011)

"A novel rivetingly plotted and beautifully written... [Maksik] writes about the moral ambiguity of Will's circumstances with dazzling clarity and impressive philosophical rigor."--New York Times

"With writing that is reminiscent of James Salter's in its sensuality, Francine Prose's capacious inquiry into difficult moral questions and Martin Amis's loose-limbed evocation of the perils of youth, Maksik brings us back to that point in all our lives when character is molten, integrity elusive and beauty unbearably thrilling."--Christian Science Monitor

"You Deserve Nothing is a powerful, absorbing novel and Alexander Maksik is an unusually gifted writer." - Tom Perrotta

A Marker to Measure Drift (2013)

"A fever dream of a novel...[T]he ending is so compelling and visceral that one rushes until the fever breaks, dazed and haunted by its power."--Chicago Tribune

"Beautiful...It will leave you breathless and speechless; it will send you reeling."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Immensely powerful...Beautifully written...Maksik brings Jacqueline's tale to a devastating finale."-- Boston Globe

"No novel I read this year affected me more powerfully than Alexander Maksik's A Marker to Measure Drift."--Richard Russo

Shelter in Place (2016)

"There's something truly exhilarating about reading a novel that's so audaciously original, so inventive and, let's be honest, so sort of weird that you want to put it in the hands of just about everyone you know."--San Francisco Chronicle

"An incredibly courageous novel."--Publishers Weekly

"[R]iveting and disturbing...a totally original exploration of mental illness, sexual politics, family and violence."--Guardian

"Maksik is one of the most exacting and daring writers we have...from the first sentence there's no turning away from this story."--Literary Hub

The Long Corner (2022)

"Eerie and moving...finally an argument for the necessity of irony, risk and integrity in the production of art as in life."--New York Times Book Review

"The Long Corner is a riveting read by an abundantly talented writer and storyteller."--Los Angeles Review of Books

"[A]n enigmatic literary top that continues to spin after the last page...a triumph of sophisticated art."--The Forward

"The Long Corner is a sharp, witty and utterly engrossing novel about culture, kitsch, cynicism, and all the ways we corrupt what is most important to us. I laughed out loud, I couldn't get enough of the characters, and I couldn't put it down."--Phil Klay