“The American No,” eight short stories by Rupert Everett that began as eight script ideas, seven of which remain unseen, all gaining a remarkable new life on the page as sublime short stories.
LitStackers! Line up for this one. In presale now, Atria Books | Simon & Schuster will release The American No by Rupert Everett on Jan 20, 2026. Early word suggests an immersive and exciting collection of eight stories. While details remain scarce, the publisher’s description and the cover art hint at a reading experience that will linger long after you turn the last page. Here’s the scoop and early praise on this next must-read. Dip into the book fund for this one!
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In This Spotlight On The American No
About The American No
These eight stories take us from Hollywood in the 1980s to India during the Raj, from a Cotswold teashop in the present day to Paris in the time of Proust. In every case, revelry is never far away, the characters spring fully formed from the page, and wit and surprise are in abundance.
In his first, “engrossing and delightful” (Town & Country) collection of stories—drawn from the wealth of film and TV ideas Rupert Everett has worked on over the course of his illustrious career—Everett takes us on exhilarating journeys with a cast of extraordinary characters. From Oscar Wilde’s last night in Paris to the ferociously unforgiving world of a Los Angeles talent agency and beyond, these “dynamic and glib, knowing and innocent, atmospheric and frothy” (Booklist) stories will delight and surprise his many fans.
The Times of London says of Everett, “We should really start describing him as a writer who acts, rather than the other way around… [He is a] supremely gifted writer.” His…book, To the End of the World (not published in the US) was named a Best Book of 2020 by The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, and The Independent. His memoir, The Vanished Years, won the Sheridan Morley Prize for Biography.
Rupert Everett’s films include Another Country, My Best Friend’s Wedding, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare in Love, Shrek II and III, among others.
Praise for The American No
“Having surfed the ebbs and flows of showbiz for nearly five decades, Everett embraces how, for both actors and writers, rejection is part of the job…. With ingenuity, he’s turned his own rejections into inspiration with his most recent book of short stories, The American No, breathing new life into a handful of rejected star-vehicle pitches that lived on in his head.”—Vanity Fair
“This is a storyteller unafraid to spike his black comedy with sudden and strongly brewed emotion… Individually, the stories [in The American No] are exhilarating; together, they add up to an intriguing self-portrait of an artist at work, presenting us with the multiple facets of an undaunted imagination, recut, repolished and ready to shine in the dark.”—The Guardian
“In [The American No, a] collection of stories, Everett…tackles topics ranging from Oscar Wilde’s final night in Paris to the no-holds-barred world of Hollywood talent agencies, and in doing so creates engrossing and delightful worlds in which readers can get lost.”—Town & Country
“[The American No is] [E]legiac. . . a remarkably coherent aesthetic vision.”—The Irish Times
“Everett has a flair for historical fiction…[In The American No,] [w]hat were once ideas for screenplays have become stories—and are all the better for the years of marinating. There is some real depth and richness here, as well as a sharp critique of the mores of La-La Land.”—Erica Wagner, Tatler
About Rupert Everett, Author of The American No
Rupert Everett shot to fame with the film Another Country in 1984 and has been a hugely successful actor and writer for many years. His films include My Best Friend’s Wedding, Shakespeare in Love, The Madness of King George, Napoleon, and many others. He is the author of two novels, three works of nonfiction, and The American No, a collection of short stories. He lives in London and New York.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Atria Books | Simon & Schuster
ISBN Trade Paperback 9781668076460
Pub Date: Jan 20, 2026
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