This New Sci-Fi Novel From a Pulitzer Prize Winner Could Be the Next Hunger Games

For only having three books under his belt, author Hernan Diaz has added an impressive number of literary prizes to his trophy case. The Argentine and American writer won the New American Voices Award for his 2017 debut novel In the Distance, and was also a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for the same book. Later, his follow-up novel, Trust, won both the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Kirkus Prize. This year, Diaz has made a triumphant return to the page – except this time, he’s playing in the science fiction sandbox.

Diaz’s newest novel, Ply, came out in September 2026. This refreshing book takes a sharp detour from the author’s usual route. Usually, Diaz writes historical fiction novels. Ply tackles Diaz’s usual themes – power, wealth, American mythology, loneliness – except, this time, in a futuristic, hardscrabble world. The novel takes place centuries from now in a ruined American city, where citizens have to struggle for even the most basic necessities, including food, shelter, and, most importantly, electricity. Overall, Ply is a dark dystopian take on America’s future, featuring a savant female protagonist whose great intellect and razor-sharp edge might just pull her out of obscurity. Sound familiar? This surprising sci-fi take from an award-winning literary novelist will remind readers of The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel – and it just might be the next big thing in dystopian fiction.

What Happens in ‘Ply’?

Image via Pan Macmillan

Like many dystopian epics, Ply begins with a girl. The book’s unnamed protagonist is introduced to readers simply as “the Pincher.” She is an orphan, hustling her way through life in a derelict cityscape. Set centuries from now, the Pincher’s world is one of decay, pollution, and rugged individualism. Citizens of this crumbling America are left to fend for themselves; they scavenge for food and trade wares with their neighbors, all the while living in fear of the powerful corporations that control society’s water and electricity output – simply called Flow and Tensor.

There’s also the terrorizing group known as CTS, a blurry security conglomerate that polices the city’s streets with hawk-like eyes. This is the context in which readers are introduced to the Pincher. As the book unfolds, readers soon learn more about her world. She lives in a deteriorating building on the wrong side of the city’s heavily polluted river, and makes her living by stealing electricity from the grid and selling it secretly on the black market – this is where her title of “Pincher” comes from.

While the Pincher has many clients, one of her passions is fueling the city’s underground music concerts. Over the years, she has earned a reputation for being exceptionally good at her job; she is both swift and undetectable. However, while surreptitiously delivering a brick of power to a concert one night, the Pincher gets the eerie feeling that she is being followed. But who is following her, and what do they want? It’s not long before the Pincher finds herself pulled into a complicated web of tinkerers, power players, and black market dealers – all of whom are scrambling to get their hands on a groundbreaking experiment. If the Pincher is able to provide the electricity to power this new machine, she could revolutionize the world as she knows it.

Like The Hunger Games and the Divergent series before it, Ply is the story of a spiky female lead who is forging not only a new path for herself but is also breaking new ground for society as a whole. While Katniss Everdeen changes the world through her physical prowess in the arena and her political cunning, and Tris challenges the status quo with her very brain functions (by being naturally immune to mind-control serum, of course), the Pincher in Ply stands out from the rest thanks to her technological genius. Diaz’s novel may be a portrait of a dystopian America, but the star of the show is, undeniably, this electrician whiz; readers will care about her character’s evolution first and foremost.

Hernan Diaz Has Never Written a Book Like ‘Ply’ Before

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Hernan Diaz is anything but a newcomer to the literary scene. When his debut novel, In the Distance, was released in 2017, it quickly became the talk of the proverbial town. The prestigious publication, The Paris Review, listed it as one of the top books of the year, while Literary Hub listed it as one of “The 20 Best Novels of the Decade.” He followed up his success with Trust – Diaz’s second book published in 2022. This sophomore release upped the ante, earning the Argentine-American writer a spot on the longlist for the 2022 Booker Prize and taking home the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It, too, found its way on many “best of” lists – including the New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2022” list.

With such a sterling reputation, fans of Diaz may have been expecting more of the same with his third release. After all, why depart from a winning model? However, Ply marks new territory for Diaz and sees him dipping his toes into the sci-fi genre, which comes with its own unique conventions and history. Did Diaz stick the landing? Both In the Distance and Trust are historical fiction novels that look to the past to help make sense of the present.

Set in the 1800s, In the Distance tells the story of a Swedish emigrant named Håkan who is searching for his brother across the American West. Along the way, he faces poverty, hardship, and discrimination. Likewise, Trust is a puzzle-like novel that takes place in the early 1900s, examining the world of extreme wealth in New York City before and after the cataclysmic event that was the Great Depression. By setting his third novel in the future, in an unspecified year, Diaz expands his toolkit, bringing in techno-thriller elements to craft a dystopian setting.

‘Ply’ Just Might Win a Literary Prize

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While Daniel Kraus took home the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with his World War I novel Angel Down, Diaz and his team could potentially be eyeing up next year’s competition. According to the Pulitzer committee, any book published in the 2026 calendar year is eligible to be considered for the 2027 award. Having hit US shelves on September 29 of this year, Diaz’s name is sure to be thrown into the ring for his experimental third novel.

If Diaz were to take home the 2027 Pulitzer Prize, he would join an elite club of writers who have two Pulitzer Prizes under their belt, including Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, John Updike, and, most recently, Colson Whitehead, who won for The Underground Railroad in 2017 and The Nickel Boys in 2020.

Fans of Ply will have to bide their time, though, as the 2027 Pulitzer Prize winners won’t be announced until May of next year. If Ply does take home any big literary awards in the coming season, it may herald a new exciting era for sci-fi novels. Announced on November 9, 2026, the 2026 Booker Prize winner, The End of Everything by M. John Harrison, has been celebrated as the first winner in Booker history to come from the science fiction world. Could Ply be the next big sci-fi literary champion? Only time will tell.