Mandel's Exit Party Maps Twin American Dystopias — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Emily St John Mandel published her seventh novel, 'Exit Party,' which opens at a 2031 Los Angeles gathering where doppelgangers of some guests appear and someone else disappears, then alternates between two future Americas — one riven by civil war, the other a surveillance state.
- The novel's protagonist Ari was the villain of Mandel's 2010 second novel, 'The Singer's Gun,' and Mandel is building a multiverse where characters reappear across 'Station Eleven,' 'The Glass Hotel,' and 'Sea of Tranquility,' with no Marvel movie planned.
- Mandel began writing 'Exit Party' in spring 2022 with a single civil-war timeline, then added a totalitarian 'mirror image' — and found herself 'struggling to stay ahead of the news cycle' as Trump's second presidency made Universe B feel current.
- Station Eleven, Mandel's 2014 third novel about life after a pandemic, has sold 1.5 million copies and been translated into 37 languages, cementing her reputation for clairvoyance after readers rediscovered it during Covid.
- Mandel is writing a TV adaptation pilot for 'Exit Party' and recently staffed writers' rooms on Netflix's dramatisation of the video game 'Assassin's Creed,' splitting time roughly one week in Los Angeles for every six in New York.
- Mandel married photographer Laura Barisonzi in 2025 at Brooklyn's Greenlight Bookstore — which has hosted her launch events since before 'Station Eleven' — with her now-10-year-old daughter serving as 'ring bearer-slash-flower girl.'
Why it matters: Mandel's writing arc for Exit Party — starting with a civil-war timeline, adding a totalitarian mirror, then watching reality catch up during Trump's second presidency — shows how her speculative fiction now tracks political shifts almost in real time, while Station Eleven's 1.5 million sales demonstrate that prescient fiction can also become a long-running commercial asset.
Ask SkimNews
