Happiness and Love by Zoe Dubno

The funny, propulsive new novel about hating your friends, hating what they bring out in you, hating how you pander to them, the perfect satirical summer read for fans of Emma Cline, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Ottessa Moshfegh.

Longlisted for the 2026 Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize
A LitHub most anticipated book of 2025

‘Exceptionally funny and entertaining’ Katy Hessel, bestselling author of The Story of Art Without Men

‘A gorgeous book on being a hater, and I inhaled this in one sitting’ Stylist


Years after escaping her unbearable artworld friends in New York for a new life in London, an unnamed writer finds herself once more at their dinner table for a single, hideous evening.

It’s the day after the funeral of their mutual friend, a failed actress and – Eugene and Nicole, an artist-curator couple – are hosting a dinner party. If the narrator once loved and admired the couple and their important friends, she now despises them all.

Most of all, however, she despises herself for being lured back to this cavernous apartment, to this hollow, bourgeois social set, for a dinner party that isn’t even being thrown in their deceased friend’s honour, but in the honour of an up-and-coming actress who is by now several hours late.

As the guests sip at their drinks and await the actress’s arrival, the narrator, from her vantage point in the corner seat of a white sofa entertains herself - and us - with a silent, tender, merciless takedown.

A satire about friendship, capitalism, culture, and art, Happiness and Love is the razor-sharp new novel from an exciting literary voice.


‘Bracing and funny and fiercely clever’ Orlando Whitfield, Nero-award listed author of All that Glitters

‘An ecstatic performance of heightened perception’ Chris Kraus, bestselling author of I Love Dick

‘Zeitgeist and timeless, cynical but not soulless. Fabulous!’ Melissa Broder, author of Milk Fed and The Pisces