In Julius Taranto's debut novel, a physics grad student reluctantly accompanies her disgraced mentor to an island university where other "canceled" academics operate with impunity. Helen's difficult choice was prompted by her passion for her work, while her partner, Hew, has fewer scruples, leading them to increasingly different fates in the world of the novel. We asked the author about his influences and inspirations behind , which is read in audio by stellar performer Lauren Fortgang.

Jerry Portwood: As we all know, you have not won a Nobel Prize, but you sure took a shot with that title. How did it come about? As a debut novelist, were you worried about ... say, hubris?

Julius Taranto: I love the winky hubris of it. I hope the title, plus Lucy Kim’s amazing cover design, invites people in on the joke and hints at the difficulty of the problems the book addresses. If I do win a Nobel Prize ... let’s say, I’ll be mildly surprised.

You studied law and so obviously have thought deeply about morals and ethics. Is that what inspired you to tackle such a thorny subject with such insight?

I wanted to tackle this subject in part because I want readers to feel that our absurd dilemma—the truth that we have to love even the people we hate, even the people who do terrible things—can be pretty funny. I’m pretty sure everyone thinks deeply about their morals, but maybe it’s true that I like thorny questions more than most. Running headlong into thickets seems like a good way to learn who we are as individuals and a society—and you often have to do that in both law and in fiction.

Literature and law are connected in the sense that, at their core, they are both about justice, about giving every person their due. In law, the task is often public-facing and rhetorical—you’re trying to persuade others to reach a judgment under publicly agreed rules. In literature, you’re giving people what they deserve in a different way, a sort of private justice, by recognizing and representing the parts of people that are very real but too uncertain, specific, and irreducible for generalization and public judgment.

I don’t think it’s an accident that when a fictional character feels true and sympathetic, we say the author did the character “justice.” So I hope readers will emerge from the thicket of questions in this book not with certainties—which I really don’t have—but instead with the surprising feeling that it may be possible to see the world in a way that does justice to all of these characters, even though many of them disagree with and hurt each other.

Literature and law are connected in the sense that, at their core, they are both about justice, about giving every person their due.

Some might say, sure, a white, straight, cis man wrote a book that skewers Me Too and so-called “cancel culture”—and he chose a female narrator/protagonist as his shield. But it's also big-hearted and sly in its judgments and eviscerations. What would you like to say to potential naysayers and/or the folks who might love your novel because it’s taking on this topic so directly?I hope that any anxiety that people may feel about the combination of author and subject will be released, in the form of laughter, when they listen to the book. I won’t pretend I wasn’t awfully anxious about this myself. My friends and family, too.