The Oldest Bitch Alive

Synopsis

Gelsomina is an aging French bulldog living a carefully ordered life inside a modern glass house with the designer-architect couple who own her. Then she swallows an orb of parasitic worms. As the worms establish themselves inside her and her body begins to fail, Gelsomina becomes newly aware of the strange structures that have contained her life: the house, her dependence on humans, her relationship with the younger dog Zampanò, and the natural world she has observed but rarely been permitted to enter.

Told through shifting perspectives that include dog, parasite, and human, The Oldest Bitch Alive is an inventive and unexpectedly moving novel about consciousness, captivity, architecture, mortality, and the porous boundaries between living things. Morgan Day moves between the domestic and the cosmic, following Gelsomina toward a final encounter with the world beyond the glass. Strange, philosophical, visceral, and often funny, it is a singular debut about what it means to inhabit a body and what might constitute freedom at the end of a life.

About the Author

Morgan Day is a fiction and architecture writer whose work explores the relationships between bodies, built environments, and the natural world. Her short fiction has appeared in Ecotone, Gulf Coast, The Southampton Review, Worms Magazine, and elsewhere. The Oldest Bitch Alive is her first novel.

Publisher

Astra House

Publication Date

March 24, 2026

Format

Hardcover

Pages

208

Subjects

Literary Fiction · Experimental Fiction · Animals · Nature & Environment · Architecture · Philosophical Fiction

ISBN

9781662603372