National Bestseller. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Named a best book of March by Apple Books and Amazon, and a most anticipated book by The New York Times, Esquire, The Guardian, Time, BuzzFeed, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and Chicago Review of Books "A major novel, and a notably audacious one." - Dwight Garner, The New York Times "It feels fairly rare for a novel to be hugely intelligent and moving and fun in equal measure, but with Biography of X, Catherine Lacey somehow - magically - makes the nearly impossible look easy." - Lauren Groff from one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist. When X - an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter - falls dead in her office, her widow, Cm, wild with grief and refusing everyone's good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even Cm knows where X was born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora's box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction.