Out in February 2026: Available for preorder now
What is Now? The worlds hidden within this question have fascinated me since I was a child. This immediate moment, what we’re experiencing right now… it bathes us like air, or gravity, it is our reality, all that there is, all that we are. Yet when we try to grasp this quality, to scrutinise it or bring it into focus, it vanishes, slipping through our fingers like a dream.
We feel immersed in the present. Yet physics finds no universal ‘now’, and neuroscience tells us it’s a convincing hallucination. So if there’s no split second of happening out in the universe, no advancing frontier at which the open future becomes the solid past, where does our feeling of ‘nowness’ come from? What shapes the flow of events and sensations that we perceive – and is this really just an illusion? In Search of Now explores the latest thinking in cosmology, quantum mechanics, psychology and neuroscience to show us the creative force of a moment, weaving together personal journey, philosophical meditation, rigorous research, and above all a probing, scientific curiosity about how our lives – and worlds – unfold.
PRAISE FOR IN SEARCH OF NOW
“Expertly weaving together physics, philosophy and neuroscience, Jo Marchant’s book will change the way you think, and maybe the way you live too. Make time for it” — ANIL K. SETH
“A superb, illuminating book that will change the way you think about the present moment” — CLAUDIA HAMMOND
“Original, gripping and perspective-smashing. Jo Marchant is up there with our greatest science writers” — WILL STORR
“In this profound and brilliant treatise on the nature of reality, Marchant asks the greatest question: what does it mean to exist? A wonderful, ambitious work that won’t just shift your perspective but rather catapult it into another dimension” — GAIA VINCE
“Jo Marchant guides us through the maze that intertwines our notions of time, causality, identity, and reality – and points us in the direction of a new reframing” — ALICIA JUARRERO
“In this tour-de-force of science writing, Jo Marchant explains how the answer to that question takes in everything from the innermost workings of our minds to the limits of space and time. Profound, lively and accessible, it will leave you thinking for much longer than a moment” — SUMIT PAUL-CHOUDHURY
“A captivating guide through the slippery terrain of consciousness, illuminating both the limits and potentials of the human experience… will leave readers wiser after every turn of the page” — SUSANNAH CAHALAN
“We are intimately familiar with Now, indeed everything we experience is embedded in it. And yet it is a mystery. In this illuminating new book, Jo Marchant takes us on a marvellous personal and scientific voyage into this mystery” — DEAN BUONOMANO
“Effortlessly weaving together fascinating insights from physics, philosophy and neuroscience, In Search of Now is an engrossing and thought-provoking exploration of the most mysterious, and most precious, of all things: our ever-changing moment-to-moment experience” — KIERAN FOX
“The book’s overpowering message is that the world is a living community of nows. I’ve been studying the subject in the narrow context of quantum theory for 30 years, never realising that I lacked a general education for what I most wanted to know. Reading this book took me back to school, and I loved every minute of it!” — CHRISTOPHER FUCHS
“This is a proper safari of science: from Amazonians with no word for time, to Apollo astronauts staring at the infinite, Jo Marchant’s new book that will change the way you think about flow of time and the passing of every moment” — KEVIN FONG
In Search of Now is published in the UK by Canongate and in the US by Liveright.