The Humans

The Humans
by Matt Haig

Pub Date:  August 2014

The bestselling, award-winning author of The Midnight Library offers his funniest, most devastating dark comedy yet, a silly, sad, suspenseful, and soulful (Philadelphia Inquirer) novel thats full of heart (Entertainment Weekly).


When an extra-terrestrial visitor arrives on Earth, his first impressions of the human species are less than positive. Taking the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a prominent mathematician at Cambridge University, the visitor is eager to complete the gruesome task assigned to him and hurry home to his utopian planet, where everyone is omniscient and immortal.

He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, and their capacity for murder and war, and is equally baffled by the concepts of love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this strange species than he had thought. Disguised as Martin, he drinks wine, reads poetry, develops an ear for rock music, and has a taste for peanut butter. Slowly, unexpectedly, he forges bonds with Martins family. He begins to see hope and beauty in the humans imperfections and begins to question the very mission that brought him there.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Praised by The New York Times as a novelist of great seriousness and talent, author Matt Haig delivers an unlikely story about human nature and the joy found in the messiness of life on Earth. The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable tale that playfully and movingly explores the ultimate subjectourselves.