'This Is the Only Kingdom,' Debut Novel by Professor Jaquira Díaz, Out Soon
Jaquira Díaz, acclaimed writer and Assistant Professor of Writing, is set to publish her first novel, This is the Only Kingdom, on October 15, 2025 with Algonquin Books. Known primarily for her nonfiction essays published everywhere from The Atlantic to The Kenyon Review to Conde Nast Traveler, her work has earned her two Pushcart Prizes, a Whiting Award, numerous prestigious fellowships, and has been featured in The Best Experimental American Writing, and The Best American Essays among many other honors and awards.
Set in an insular community of Humacao, Puerto Rico, the book follows Maricarmen through her girl-to-motherhood set against a backdrop of violence. When Maricarmen becomes involved with Rey el Cantante, a local musician on the rise, she begins to imagine a life beyond what she knows; but she finds that breaking free is not that simple. Maricarmen struggles to make a home for herself, Rey, their daughter Nena, and Rey's younger brother—until one day changes everything. Fifteen years later, the community's support for Maricarmen and Nena dissipates in the wake of a murder investigation of which Maricarmen and Nena find themselves at the center, and Nena, now a teenager, must learn to fight for herself and her family. Likened to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, Díaz crafts a world weighty with grief. This Is the Only Kingdom grapples with grief, girlhood, and exploration of sexual identity while navigating the world.
“The title comes from a line in Aracelis Girmay's poem, ‘Elegy,’” Díaz wrote. “It appears in her poetry collection, Kingdom Animalia, a book I've kept close over the last year, since my mother's death, as I considered grief and connectedness. I feel like the work is in conversation—the novel itself is like an elegy, and the poetry collection reaches back toward ancestors, considers death and life, what it means to be alive, to be present, here and now.”
Díaz’s first book, Ordinary Girls (Algonquin Books), is a memoir described as reading “as electrically as a novel” and took home several awards after its 2019 publication, so it is no wonder This is the Only Kingdom is marked as a most anticipated book of the year. The book has been longlisted for the 2025 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and has been named a most anticipated book of Fall 2025 by TIME and The New York Times, a Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle Unbound Selection, one of People Magazine’s Best Books of Fall 2025, and one one of Electric Literature’s 48 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2025. Kirkus Reviews raves, “Díaz writes beautifully about grief, identity, addiction, family, and the blurry line between myth, truth, and history.”
When asked about this foray into fiction writing, Díaz wrote, “There is a certain kind of freedom I feel when writing fiction, because I can change anything about the story without feeling the same kind of responsibility to tell the truth. And yet! Fiction also allows me the freedom to tell the truth in ways that may not always be possible in nonfiction when I'm writing about real people. When writing about other people, I always feel a sense of responsibility, not just to the truth, but justice and fairness. I often ask myself, Am I being fair? Is this just? In a novel you can murder that character if you need to. You can decide if the villain gets his comeuppance. You can reveal dirty secrets and still sleep at night because it's all disguised as fiction. But most importantly, even in fiction, you must always tell the truth. Even when you lie.”
This is the Only Kingdom is available for preorder on Hachett’s website.