Order of Sequoia Nagamatsu Books

Sequoia Nagamatsu is an American author of literary fiction and speculative fiction. He is the author of the novel How High We Go in the Dark and the short‑story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone. His work has appeared in publications such as Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, and Lightspeed Magazine, and he teaches creative writing at St. Olaf College and in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program. Originally from Oahu and the San Francisco Bay Area, he now lives in Minneapolis with his family.

Sequoia Nagamatsu made his debut as an author in 2016 with Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone. Below is a list of Sequoia Nagamatsu’s books in order of when they were originally released:

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

If You Like Sequoia Nagamatsu Books, You’ll Love…

• Emily St. John Mandel
• Kazuo Ishiguro
• Paolo Bacigalupi

Sequoia Nagamatsu Synopses: In How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, a grieving archaeologist travels to the Arctic Circle in 2030 to continue his late daughter’s research at the Batagaika Crater, where melting permafrost has begun to reveal long‑buried secrets. Among them is the preserved body of a young girl who appears to have died from an ancient virus. Once released, the Arctic plague spreads across the globe and reshapes life for generations, forcing humanity to find new ways to endure, adapt, and imagine a future in the shadow of loss.

The novel follows a series of interconnected characters confronting the pandemic’s aftermath. In a theme park built for terminally ill children, an employee who has grown cynical finds himself drawn to a mother trying desperately to hold on to her infected son. A scientist searching for a cure discovers an unexpected form of companionship when one of his test subjects, a pig, begins to speak. A widowed painter and her granddaughter embark on a cosmic journey to locate a new home for humanity, carrying their grief with them into the stars.

Across these stories, the book traces how people respond to catastrophe with invention, tenderness, and hope, exploring the ways connection persists even as the world changes beyond recognition.

In Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, Sequoia Nagamatsu opens with “The Return to Monsterland,” a Godzilla‑inspired story that sets the tone for a collection shaped by Japanese folklore, pop culture, and the surreal. Across twelve fabulist pieces, the book explores characters caught between the ordinary and the uncanny. In “Rokurokubi,” a man with the ability to stretch his neck to impossible lengths tries to salvage a marriage built on secrets. Newly dead souls find their bearings in “The Inn of the Dead’s Orientation for Being a Japanese Ghost.” In “Girl Zero,” a couple attempts to revive their deceased daughter with the help of a shapeshifter, navigating grief and the strange hope that follows. The title story imagines a Tokyo where people do not die but are reborn without their memories, and a woman sparks a months‑long dancing frenzy that sweeps through the city.

Throughout the collection, Nagamatsu blends the fantastic with the emotional, turning to myth, futurism, and the absurd to illuminate the fragile spaces people occupy when they are at their most vulnerable.