Why Fish Don't Exist

The quirky and profound international bestseller – at once a life-affirming memoir on how to live well in a world governed by chaos, and a darkly astonishing scientific biography

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'I want to live at this book's address: the intersection of history and biology and wonder and failure and sheer human stubbornness. What a sumptuous, surprising, dark delight' Carmen Maria Machado, author of Into the Dream House

'Her book took me to strange depths I never imagined, and I was smitten' The New York Times Book Review

'A story told with an open heart, every page of it animated by verve, nuance, and full-throated curiosity' Leslie Jamison, author of Make It Scream, Make It Burn

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When Lulu Miller's relationship falls apart, she turns to an unlikely figure for guidance – the 19th-century naturalist, David Starr Jordan. Pouring over his diaries, Lulu discovers a man obsessed with nature's hidden order, devoted to studying shimmering scales and sailing the world in search of new species of fish.

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake sends more than a thousand of Jordan's specimens, housed in glass jars, plummeting to the ground, his story of resilience leads Lulu to believe she has found the antidote to life's unpredictability. But lurking behind the tale of this great taxonomist lies a darker story waiting to be told: one about the human cost of attempting to define the form of things unknown.

An idiosyncratic, personal approach to this fascinating scientific biography, Why Fish Don't Exist is an astonishing tale of newfound love, scientific discovery and how to live well in a world governed by chaos.