MacKenzie Scott, 56, has begun serializing her first novel since her 2019 divorce from Jeff Bezos on Substack, releasing “Last Days in Two Nations (A History in Eighteen Minds)” in daily installments starting August 8.
The 80,000-word dystopian work is available free to subscribers and has already drawn roughly 6,000 followers after five excerpts. Scott, who received a 4 percent stake in Amazon as part of her divorce settlement, is bypassing traditional publishers entirely for the project.
The novel assembles multiple perspectives on a fascist partial takeover of the United States, set partly in disputed territory called the Dakota Membership amid a fictional clash between the “Still United” States and a western stronghold in the Dakotas.
One of two rival presidents depicted is Damian Paxton, a South Africa-raised “hotshot surgeon” stationed in Rapid City whose appetites run to excess. “Last night I had three different women in my bed. And that happens to me every night of the week. You can stop asking me how I am in the morning,” he quips in the text. The character also collects fish and remains vigilant against KHV — koi herpes virus.
The other leader is an unnamed daydreamer referred to as “President priss.” Scott writes: “President priss could probably see him right out the window of her Lincoln bedroom or whatever, big four-poster posts pointing up to God like her toes when her First Man secret serviced her, and her sons up all night talking smack on some smackchat, and what was she doing about it?”
Another thread follows a character named Jonah traveling to the breakaway territory with a rat in a “biodegradable carrier,” apparently to evade land mines at the border. During the journey he takes a cell phone call from his prying sister, whom he compares to a beagle or the “Stasi,” the East German secret police. In his room, a television shows “a troupe of dancing nurses in sexy Santa dresses.”
Scott has not done any PR or interviews for the project, and her agent did not respond to requests for comment. With no need for profits or book sales, she has maintained complete creative independence.
The project marks her return to fiction after more than a decade. Her debut novel, “The Testing of Luther Albright,” published in 2005, traced a California dam engineer’s family struggles after an earthquake hits his Sacramento home. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, with whom Scott studied at Princeton, wrote a blurb calling it “a rarity: a sophisticated novel that breaks and swells the heart.” Scott’s second novel, “Traps,” published in 2013, followed a movie star on a road trip to Las Vegas.
In the viral moment that established her public profile beyond literature, Scott’s 2019 divorce from Bezos made her one of the wealthiest women in the world. She subsequently signed the Giving Pledge and has donated more than $19 billion to roughly 2,450 nonprofit organizations through her Yield Giving organization, including major contributions to HBCUs and groups focused on racial equality and gender justice. She sold 75 percent of her Amazon stock from the divorce settlement.
Some observers have questioned the literary merits of her latest work. “As a lawyer come novelist, I am never keen on criticizing any author’s writing journey,” said “Tuxedo Park” author Thomas Kenniff. “However, after perusing some of Ms. Scott’s rather colorful prose, I wonder if she might do better devoting her time, and substantial resources, to something more purposeful,” he told The Post.
Scott continues publishing new installments daily on the Substack newsletter of the same name as the book.