World Pacific: A Novel

A New Yorker Best Book of 2025

“Terrific . . . John le Carré meets Evelyn Waugh.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Set in San Francisco and the Asian Pacific during the outbreak of the Second World War, a darkly comic novel of intrigue, adventure, and the perils of self-invention from the author of The Torqued Man.

In 1939, boys’ adventure writer Richard Halifax vanishes in the Pacific while sailing from Hong Kong to San Francisco as part of the World’s Fair festivities.

Hildegard Rauch, an é...