The First Bad Man

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.