NELL ZINK grew up in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She did a variety of service and administrative jobs before becoming a professional novelist at age fifty. Before then, her publications were confined to an indie rock fanzine and short-lived blog, both titled Animal Review. Her books to date include The Wallcreeper, Mislaid, Private Novelist (two novellas written for her friend Avner Shats), Nicotine, Doxology, and Avalon. Three of her books became New York Times Notable Books, and one was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Granta, and Harper's Magazine. In 2022, she served as the Friedrich Dürrenmatt Guest Professor for World Literature at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She lives near Berlin.

"To stay out late in Zink's world, loitering, is a pleasure. . . . Her voice is cool and fastidious, but she has a screwball quality--a comic sensibility rooted in pain. She grinds her own sophisticated colors as a writer; her ironies are finely tuned; she is uniquely alert to the absurdities of human conduct."
--Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

"This sly, sprightly novel provides a distraction from the news while the news is all over it. . . . One of the pleasures of Sister Europe is that it's thoroughly up-to-date but still shaped in the timeless way of Wodehousian comedy of errors."
--Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Picaresque, amusing, and brisk, this is a worldly hangout novel of 21st-century manners."
--Vogue, "The Best Books of 2025--A Preview"

"Zink is one of the most humane writers we've got, and one of the best. . . . As ever, Zink is funny in a way that requires careful observation and precision. . . . The night narrated here feels like the kind of time outside of time in which classical comedies take place--a liminal space in which characters experience transformations impossible in the everyday world. Here, some characters find each other, some find their way home, and some get a bit closer to finding themselves."
--Kirkus Review, starred

"Zink cleverly and expertly combines hilarious scenes with razor-sharp observations on culture, Americans in Europe, literature in the Middle East, sexuality, and the heavy hand of history."
--Library Journal, starred

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

Pub date: 2025-03-25

Length: 208 pages