One of the most anticipated books of 2026 as chosen by: Vogue, Stylist, Forbes, Oprah Daily and LitHub
'Like Severance for relationships' Oprah Daily
‘Sophie Mackintosh turns the novel of adultery inside out’ Lauren Elkin
‘It will stay with me for a long time’ Monica Heisey
This is the story of an affair. Clara and Francis are in love, but nobody knows it. For months they have been slipping away from their respective lives, sharing stolen afternoons in hotel rooms, their time together painfully sweet and all too short. Until one day they wake up in a bedroom neither of them recognises with no memory of how they got there.
They find themselves in a strange and unfamiliar city: a place where adulterers can live openly as couples, without fear of consequence, putting the theory of their love into practice. Here the sky is painted over the old town square in changeless, cloudless blue. Ripe fruits wait on the table each morning and the sunset comes down in a blaze of pink each night. And contact with the real world is impossible. As long as Clara and Francis are here, they only have each other.
How do you know when you’ve found true love? How much would you sacrifice to keep hold of it? And how long can you stay in paradise before the cracks start to show?
From the Booker Prize-nominated author of The Water Cure and Cursed Bread comes an intoxicating modern love story. Permanence is a thrillingly erotic and sharply relatable portrait of longing and obsession, intimacy and betrayal, possession and dispossession.
Genre: Literary Fiction
'Like Severance for relationships' Oprah Daily
‘Sophie Mackintosh turns the novel of adultery inside out’ Lauren Elkin
‘It will stay with me for a long time’ Monica Heisey
This is the story of an affair. Clara and Francis are in love, but nobody knows it. For months they have been slipping away from their respective lives, sharing stolen afternoons in hotel rooms, their time together painfully sweet and all too short. Until one day they wake up in a bedroom neither of them recognises with no memory of how they got there.
They find themselves in a strange and unfamiliar city: a place where adulterers can live openly as couples, without fear of consequence, putting the theory of their love into practice. Here the sky is painted over the old town square in changeless, cloudless blue. Ripe fruits wait on the table each morning and the sunset comes down in a blaze of pink each night. And contact with the real world is impossible. As long as Clara and Francis are here, they only have each other.
How do you know when you’ve found true love? How much would you sacrifice to keep hold of it? And how long can you stay in paradise before the cracks start to show?
From the Booker Prize-nominated author of The Water Cure and Cursed Bread comes an intoxicating modern love story. Permanence is a thrillingly erotic and sharply relatable portrait of longing and obsession, intimacy and betrayal, possession and dispossession.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"A haunting and seductive novel which pulses with the possibility, or impossibility, of love." - Avni Doshi
"With Permanence, Sophie Mackintosh turns the novel of adultery inside out. This is the perfect imperfect love story: haunting, unsettling, uncanny." - Lauren Elkin
"I loved this sensuous, moving, and quietly devastating novel. Mackintosh's portrait of a couple in desperate thrall to romance - and her revelations about the dangers and delights of intimacy, of vulnerability's risks and rewards - will stay with me for a long time." - Monica Heisey
"A brilliant parable about desire, infidelity, and devotion... A dark gem that asks us to consider the cost of intimacy - I tore through it." - Erin Somers
"With Permanence, Sophie Mackintosh turns the novel of adultery inside out. This is the perfect imperfect love story: haunting, unsettling, uncanny." - Lauren Elkin
"I loved this sensuous, moving, and quietly devastating novel. Mackintosh's portrait of a couple in desperate thrall to romance - and her revelations about the dangers and delights of intimacy, of vulnerability's risks and rewards - will stay with me for a long time." - Monica Heisey
"A brilliant parable about desire, infidelity, and devotion... A dark gem that asks us to consider the cost of intimacy - I tore through it." - Erin Somers
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Used availability for Sophie Mackintosh's Permanence