Hernan Diaz is back with his third novel, Ply, and he is not interested in the labels critics want to pin on it. The Pulitzer-winning author released his first novel in four years this week, and he is fighting the dystopia tag with genuine warmth rather than combative jargon. “I take issue with the word dystopia,” he tells Eric Olson. “I don’t think Ply is a dystopian novel.”
He is also having none of “post-apocalyptic.” “If there’s an apocalypse, there isn’t a ‘post.’ It’s an eschatological word. It’s the end!” Diaz insists. And when Olson asks about nihilism, Diaz connects the two terms directly: “These terms are married, right?”
The World of Ply
Diaz’s new novel takes place in an urban future (probably New York City) reclaimed by nature. State capacity has collapsed, crime is low, and punk shows—more like post-punk, he specifies—dominate the scene. The protagonist is a nameless young “pincher” who steals electricity from the spotty grid and delivers it to clients in battery form. Her customers include raucous musical groups and criminal elements. After she breaks through in battery storage technology, she becomes caught in a power struggle between local kingpins.
Diaz says people in this world have lost things that are very painful to lose: “The social safety net provided by the state. Rule of law. Healthcare. Education. Things that we take for granted, almost like air or water. We believe these things are natural, but they’re not. They’re constructs.”
But other things also vanish, he says, “things that were absolutely worth losing.” Those include oppressive power structures, environmental suppression, and the commodification of everyday life.
The Pincher’s Story
The novel follows a plot-driven arc, but Diaz’s narrative is also full of pontification. He compares it to his debut, In the Distance: “There was freedom in dissolution, joy in disorder,” “Paranoia is not unlike religion,” and similar passages. This is by design.
“The modern novel since the 17th century has been the home of ideas and how to present them in a narrative, formally appealing way,” Diaz says. “All these novels that we think of as adventure novels, like The Count of Monte Cristo, or [H.G.] Wells, they’re constitutional of the novel as a form. I don’t know at what point a literary umpire decreed that this was anathema, that if you can take something out without affecting the structure, you ought to take it out.”
His latest work completes an all-American triptych: pre-U.S. (In the Distance), peak U.S. (Trust), and post-U.S. (Ply). Diaz says it wasn’t deliberate. “I’m not that kind of writer. I’m really guided by emotion. It just so happens that I’m interested in the American canon and American history. As I was starting Ply, I saw the arc that you described. It was like, ‘Okay, I guess this is what I’m doing.'”
Researching Pola
Diaz is an unquestionably methodical researcher, and Ply required a deep dive into physics. The novel features an eccentric physicist named Pola, and Diaz admits he had no background in the field. “In the Distance takes place in the West, and I’ve never ridden a horse in my life,” he says. “Trust is concerned with finance and capital, and I was a money idiot when I started writing that book. In the same way, writing Ply—I went to the shittiest high schools imaginable and then went straight into the humanities. So I didn’t have any physics background.”
His solution was a demanding crash course. He started with general physics explainers, moved to primary sources, and hit the math wall hard. After three or four years, he had “a reasonable amount of knowledge” and cold-emailed a project director at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), professing his ignorance and asking for help formulating a realistic particle physics invention for his novel.
“She engaged with me and invited me over,” Diaz says. “I spent the week 500 feet underground. It changed my intellectual life for sure. I had meetings with all these engineers and physicists. It was fun to see what a great time they had, being free to imagine [my book’s invention], talking about something completely impossible.”
Diaz also spent time at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute during a 2024 writing residency, dipping into debates around human consciousness. He ties the physics and the music to the novel’s central theme: “For all the physics, for all the post-punk music, I think that this book is about selfhood. It’s about subjectivity. This is the question at the core of the book.”
The Bottom Line
Olson profiles Diaz as one of the kindest authors he has met recently. That kindness comes through even in the quotes, where Diaz is warm and playful about the absurdity of the labels critics throw at him. He is not combative, he is just precise about what his novel is and is not.
Diaz wants Ply to be judged on its own terms. He is not trying to fit it into a genre box, and he is happy to argue the point. His approach to research—cold-emailing CERN, spending a week underground, engaging with physicists—is the kind of methodical dedication that makes fiction feel alive.
The novel is out this week, and Diaz’s refusal to label it is part of the package. It is a book about loss, about what we take for granted, and about what we are willing to let go. It is also a book about selfhood and subjectivity. That is a big ambition for a novel set in a world without a state, and Diaz is betting that readers will trust him to deliver it.
- Release: Diaz’s third novel, Ply, is out this week.
- Background: Diaz is a Pulitzer winner whose previous novels include In the Distance and Trust.
- Setting: The novel takes place in an urban future reclaimed by nature, probably New York City.
- Protagonist: A nameless young “pincher” who steals electricity and delivers it to clients in battery form.
- Themes: Loss of the social safety net, rule of law, healthcare, education, and the commodification of everyday life.
Diaz’s refusal to label his novel is charming rather than combative.
That is the honest reaction to this story. He is not trying to fight the dystopia label; he is simply saying his book is something else. A new way of life. A new way of thinking.
Source material: “Hernan Diaz’s New Novel Isn’t a Dystopia—Trust Him,” Literary Hub.
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