Homebound

By: Portia Elan

Brought to you by Penguin.

Six hundred years. Five interlocking lives. One computer game. And the many paths that can lead us home.

1983: a grieving teenager can't wait to leave home.
2083: a scientist makes a radical discovery about the human spirit.
2586: a pirate captain navigates the perils of a flooded world.
Meanwhile: an astronaut is on a rescue mission in deep space.

How do these four pioneering women connect, across centuries, vast oceans and far-distant planets? The puzzle leads to a vintage computer game, an unforgettable fellow traveller and a quest: to find out what home means to them.

Homebound is a coming out and coming-of-age story, a wild and precarious sea adventure, a space odyssey. Journeying through loss, creativity, found family, it asks big questions – and offers profound consolations – about life in this lonely, miraculous universe.

© Portia Elan 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critic reviews

A joy -- at once a gripping mystery that confidently spans centuries, and a hauntingly beautiful exploration of what makes us human. Inventive and gritty, powerful and clear-eyed, it kept me up all night! (MADELINE MILLER, author of The Song of Achilles)

A sparkling novel, a work of joyous and serious invention... profoundly attentive to the concept of home as something portable, created not by territory but by family (born and chosen), storytelling and solidarity (KALIANE BRADLEY, author of The Ministry of Time)

Homebound is a big, bold, ecstatic world -- full of heart and wonder -- where stories weave through time to connect us, and our faith in each other makes us human (RUTH OZEKI, author of The Book of Form & Emptiness)

A fascinatingly plausible and atmospheric story of a future shaped by tech and love intertwined (EMMA DONOGHUE, author of Room)

I absolutely inhaled it! What a gorgeous debut -- beautifully written, so much fun and so thoughtful (ELLA RISBRIDGER, author of Midnight Chicken)

The most original and arresting novel I’ve read in a very long time... What a joy; what a marvel (ANNA NORTH, author of Bog Queen)

Beautifully written... one for fans of Gabrielle Zevin and Kaliane Bradley

Quiet, smoothly written, and deeply internal, this is a gift to readers who enjoy the act of story-creation, -telling, and -experiencing

Like Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, Homebound portrays a plausible, forlorn version of the future, one that’s tied to the past through the staying power of stories

Unique and complex, this novel tells an unexpectedly moving story of love, loss, and how the past shapes -- and haunts -- our present. An ingenious narrative that explores the meaning of love and interconnectedness across time