The First Bad Man : A Novel

The New York Times Bestseller

The “brilliant, hilarious, irreverent, piercing” (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut novel from Miranda July, acclaimed filmmaker, artist, and author of All Fours, a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction.

Cheryl Glickman believes in romances that span centuries and a soul that migrates between babies. She works at a women’s self-defense nonprofit and lives alone. When her bosses ask if their twenty-year-old daughter, Clee, can move into her house for a while, Cheryl’s eccentrically ordered world explodes. And yet it is Clee—the selfish, cruel blond bombshell—who bullies Cheryl into reality and, unexpectedly, leads her to the love of a lifetime.

Tender, gripping, slyly hilarious, infused with raging sexual fantasies and fierce maternal love, Miranda July’s first novel confirms her as a spectacularly original, iconic, and important voice today, and a writer for all time.