Audrey Niffenegger has completed a sequel to "The Time Traveler's Wife" 14 years after beginning the project in 2012. The new novel incorporates political themes and explores dystopian futures.
Niffenegger started writing the follow-up after President Obama's re-election, describing that moment as a "rosy" time in American politics. Over the decade-plus of work, she imagined scenarios spanning 20, 40 and 60 years into the future. The political landscape shifted during her writing process, and elements she initially conceived as speculative began to feel prescient.
An early scene depicts neo-Nazis at a house party. Niffenegger noted that when she wrote this sequence, few expected the U.S. would see a resurgence of neo-Nazism. She attributes the foresight not to special insight but to observable trends. "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. And I thought the logical progression of that would be fascism," she said in an interview with the Guardian.
The original "The Time Traveler's Wife," published in 2003, became a global bestseller and made Niffenegger famous. She is also an artist. In the interview, she touches on impostor syndrome, screen adaptations of her work, and describes her political worldview as having become more radical.
The long gap between the debut and its sequel meant, as Niffenegger put it, that "people forgot I existed" during the intervening years. The Guardian interview indicates this follow-up marks her return to the fictional world she created over two decades ago.