It Will Come Back to You: Collected Stories
Riverhead Books, Hardcover, July 14, 2026
Over the course of thirty years, Sigrid Nunez has become one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive voices, producing nine penetrating, profound novels celebrated by fans and critics alike. Revered for her warm, unadorned style, Nunez’s books are “as sophisticated as they are straightforward” (New York Times Magazine), melding a “wry, withering wit” (NPR) with “explosions of pathos” (Washington Post) to conjure “world[s] of insight into death, grief, art, and love” (Wall Street Journal).
But she has not, until now, produced a book of stories. In It Will Come Back to You, Nunez brings together thirteen of her best stories from the decades-long sweep of her career, tracing the origins of her style and her remarkable artistic range. Moving from the momentous to the mundane, Nunez maintains her expert balance between gravity and levity while probing the philosophical questions that illuminate her work, such as: How can we withstand the passage of time? Is memory the greatest fiction?
What New York Times critic Dwight Garner says of Nunez’s novels is true of these stories as well: “They are wise, provocative, funny—good and strong company.”
ADVANCE PRAISE
“Nunez, winner of the National Book Award for The Friend, offers more close readings of human nature in this masterful career-spanning story collection. Taken together, the entries reveal her considerable range…. Nunez’s sharp wit remains a steady presence across the collection, roaming freely from one heavy subject to the next without ever slipping into sentimentality. It’s a treasure trove.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Nunez delivers vivid portraits of people living quiet lives of desperation in these sterling short stories…. A welcome addition to an already much esteemed body of work.” – Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Spanning her career, [Nunez’s] stories promise the same brilliant writing from one of our best writers.” Lit Hub: Most Anticipated Books of 2026
“One of the great writers of our time… With remarkable tenderness, Nunez navigates themes of aging, death and mental illness. Reading her work feels like having lunch with your smartest, wisest, most empathetic friend.” Los Angeles Times, 12 Best Summer Books
Oprah Daily includes It Will Come Back to You among the 24 Best Books of Summer 2026: “Thirteen pieces spanning thirty years, each one showing how [Nunez] can turn the everyday into something quietly devastating, then slip in a line that makes you laugh despite yourself. Expect grief, art, love, mortality, and the strange intimacy of ordinary conversation—now in perfectly tart, bite-size form.”
“Nunez accomplishes in her stories what we have come to expect of her from her marvelous novels: a no-nonsense honesty, a matchless intelligence, an unswerving empathy, and a breathtaking intimacy of voice.” Jenny Mustard
“This is a wonderful collection and brilliant showcase for Sigrid Nunez’s many talents. She excels in the intriguing start, the curious setting and the mischievous end. Across the thirteen stories I noticed certain wry commonalities: the ambivalent protagonist who keeps receiving advice that she doesn’t know whether to rely on or not; the liminal space of a holiday, transit or transaction that causes odd memories to rise up; and mothers of all kinds. Her uncertain protagonists in an uncertain world are the perfect literary creations: vexed in their own lives but delightful to encounter. ” Bidisha
About Sigrid
Sigrid Nunez has published nine novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and, most recently, The Vulnerables. Nunez is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. The Friend, a New York Times bestseller, won the 2018 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize. In France, it was longlisted for the 2019 Prix Femina and named a finalist for the 2019 Prix du Meilleure Livre. It was also a finalist for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award. In 2024, The New York Times listed The Friend among the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. A collection of Nunez’s short fiction will be published on July 14, 2026, under the title It Will Come Back to You.
The Friend has been adapted for film by directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee (2024). What Are You Going Through has been adapted for a film directed by Pedro Almodóvar, The Room Next Door (2024).
The French translation of The Vulnerables was awarded the Prix des Inrockuptibles for best foreign novel. It was also a finalist for the Prix Femina étranger and longlisted for the Prix Médicis étranger, the Grand Prix de littérature américaine, and the Prix du Meilleur livre étranger.
Nunez’s other honors and awards include a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, the Rome Prize in Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Literature Prize. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among the journals to which she has contributed are The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Threepenny Review, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and London Review of Books. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including four Pushcart Prize volumes and four anthologies of Asian-American literature. Her story “The Plan” was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2019. Her essay “Life and Story,” originally published in The Sewanee Review, was selected for The Best American Essays 2023. Her work has been published in more than thirty-five countries.
Photo by Adam Lerner
Books by Sigrid Nunez
