Artist and novelist Audrey Niffenegger began work on the highly anticipated follow-up to her massive 2003 hit, The Time Traveler’s Wife, in 2012. She started the project shortly after Barack Obama was re-elected, a period she describes as a relatively rosy time in American politics that felt about as stable as one could expect. However, the novel demanded that she project the world forward by 20, 40, or even 60 years. Over the ensuing 14 years, the United States underwent profound political shifts that transformed the landscape she was attempting to forecast. In the 14 years she spent exploring various dystopian futures, American politics moved on. And her imaginings began to look worryingly realistic. And I thought the logical progression of that would be fascism,” she says.
Niffenegger emphasizes that she is not psychic, but notes that the warning signs were visible long before they made mainstream headlines. Reflecting on her early experiences, she recalls that the first news stories she followed were about Watergate. She grew up observing the Republican Party take an increasingly aggressive stance, suggesting that the path toward current political tensions was long in the making. An early scene in her new book, featuring neo-Nazis at a domestic gathering, felt like a distant possibility when she wrote it, but it gained unsettling relevance as global politics drifted toward volatility. She tells me, the clues were all there. “The first thing I remember reading in the news was Watergate, and so I’ve grown up with Reagan, and the Republicans coming on stronger and stronger, so that every Republican president we get is more of a disaster, it’s not like she is “psychic or anything”. Sorry your browser does not support audio – but you can download here and listen $ https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2026/10/09/Life_Out_Of_Order_Chapter_1_Audio_Clip.mp3.
The original Time Traveler’s Wife achieved a status as a cultural phenomenon, centered on the characters of Clare and Henry. Henry, who suffers from a rare genetic condition, involuntarily shifts through time, leaving his partner to navigate his sudden disappearances. Niffenegger notes that she always considered her debut a significantly darker story than many readers perceived. While fans often praised the work as being incredibly romantic, she acknowledges that it is simultaneously heavy, driven by a sense of inevitability where characters must choose to find happiness despite knowing that their circumstances will eventually fall apart. A man who is forever disappearing on her because he has a rare genetic condition that causes him to lurch involuntarily forwards and backwards in time, the Time Traveler’s Wife – the 2003 novel so popular it became a cultural phenomenon – is about an artist named Clare who falls in love with Henry.
Life has shifted considerably for Niffenegger since the book’s release. Now 63, she lives in a Chicago home filled with books and a diverse taxidermy collection, including a rhea and various bird specimens, shared with her husband, the Scottish artist Eddie Campbell. She describes her current demeanor as bookish and bohemian, though she is currently recovering from a serious, prolonged illness she prefers to keep private. Throughout her career, her artistic themes have remained consistent, focusing on death, love, loss, and the nature of romance. And knows – but cannot change – hardships that will happen in their shared future, henry is condemned to keep revisiting the most painful chapters of his life.
Recalling the sudden, massive success of her early career, she admits the experience was highly surreal. The intense scrutiny and academic digging into her work reminded her of art school critiques, though she struggled with the feeling that people eventually forgot she existed once the initial fervor subsided. This success brought rapid travel demands, once visiting a different American city every day for two weeks, which she ultimately found unsustainable. Her success also led to a $5 million advance for her 2009 novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, a ghost story that required her to spend time researching in London’s Highgate Cemetery.
The writing process for her current project was deliberate and extended as she waited for real-world events to resolve. She watched as movements such as the protests following the death of George Floyd swept through the country, hoping for genuine institutional change, only to feel disillusioned when the impact seemed to dissipate like a rock falling into a pond. She maintains a sharp, sarcastic view of billionaires and political figures she perceives as preparing for personal survival rather than addressing societal collapse, arguing that people should be more vigilant and active.
Beyond her writing, Niffenegger continues to operate the Artists Book House, a nonprofit school she established in 2019. Having previously served as a professor at Columbia College Chicago’s Centre for Book and Paper Arts, she values the creative freedom that financial success has provided, allowing her to own her schedule. She grew up in a middle-class suburban environment in Evanston, far from the baroque childhoods some assume she had. After spending over a decade on her latest manuscript, she says she is content to take a period of rest, having finally brought her long-gestating project to fruition.
