The bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere Celeste Ng discusses the inspiration behind her dystopian new novel, Our Missing Hearts.

Celeste Ng on the inspiration behind new novel Our Missing Hearts

I had the experience of writing the book and then finding that things I’d written in the book were starting to happen in real life

When we become adults, we want to learn to pay attention to what’s going on in the way that we did when we were children

Trying to think about the things that we take for granted as adults and find that sense of wonder, in particular, was something that I worked really hard on

It is about those moments of brightness or joy or surprising connection, because I feel like those are the things that have kept me going over the past few years

I started recognising that idea that the most terrifying thing that could happen to you would be something bad happening to this other person

Your relationship with them is not over, even though they are not physically available to you

Thinking about the ways in which that foreignness can be held up as either something to aspire to or something to guard against – it feels very real to me

That’s kind of what we’re fighting for; that ability to be human and to just experience some joys in life, small as they might be

It’s a moment where I think we recognise our humanity, and we recognise that there’s a joy in being alive

The bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere returns with a dystopian tale that feels startlingly real. 

Stylist UK exclusive: Celeste Ng on speaking up, reclaiming joy and writing her latest novel, Our Missing Hearts