Lost Children Archive
Lost Children Archive is Valeria Luiselli's novel about a family driving from New York to the Southwest, where the parents each pursue a documentary project, one about Apache history and one about migrant children crossing the border. As the marriage quietly frays, the story shifts perspective to the couple's young son and daughter and folds in the unseen journeys of refugee children traveling alone. Luiselli mixes the family narrative with documents, photographs, and references to other books, blurring the line between fiction and the real migration crisis. The novel asks how we tell the stories of those who go missing and how children carry the weight of history. Published in 2019, it was widely praised and shortlisted for major awards for its inventive form and its moral urgency.
What you might want to know about Lost Children Archive
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A family road trip across the American Southwest becomes entwined with the crisis of migrant children at the border.
Yes. Valeria Luiselli mixes narration with documents, photographs, and references to other books, blending fiction with the real migration crisis.
Lost Children Archive was written by Valeria Luiselli, published in 2019 by HarperCollins Publishers Limited.
Lost Children Archive is 400 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Lost Children Archive takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Lost Children Archive is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.