Levelling up: how Gabrielle Zevin’s gaming novel became the book of the summer

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow overtook titles by David Walliams and Colleen Hoover to become the UK’s number one bestseller. The author, booksellers and fans reflect on how it became a literary phenomenon

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow’s distinctive cover, with its image of Hokusai’s woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa and retro rainbow lettering, seems to be everywhere at the moment: in the centre of bookshop window displays, poking out of handbags, lying on beach towels, all over Instagram. Gabrielle Zevin’s story of love and friendship between two game designers has become a word-of-mouth hit since it came out last year, gaining famous fans including Bill Gates, Zadie Smith and actor Simu Liu, who called it “a masterpiece”.

The paperback edition, published at the end of June, climbed to the top of the UK bestsellers chart in July, knocking David Walliams and Adam Stower’s The World’s Worst Monsters from the No 1 spot, and overtaking It Starts with Us, the most recent romance novel by the queen of BookTok, Colleen Hoover. It has remained at the top of the chart for three weeks so far. “Few books in recent memory have been so universally beloved by booksellers and customers,” says Bea Carvalho, head of books and campaigns at Waterstones.