A New Yorker "Best Book Of 2025" and a Washington Post "Notable Work of Fiction from 2025."
On an otherwise ordinary fall day on a university campus in Chicago, the toddler son of an ambitious divinity-school professor mysteriously starts to glow. The nimbus, as the strange, soft light comes to be known, offers no clues to its origin and quickly upends the lives of all those who encounter it.
The Nimbus is an exuberant tragicomedy about marriage, religion, academia, and parenthood. Publishers Weekly calls it "a caustic send-up of the campus novel." Booklist finds it "intriguing, entertaining, and often searing." And the Chicago Review of Books says it's a "a hilarious and powerful portrait of faith…both big hearted and boundless in its spiritual examination."
The Nimbus is out now! Order a hardcover, ebook, or audiobook at your local bookstore or any of these fine retailers:
In this wry début novel, which reflects on modern parenting and campus politics, a community is upended when a two-year-old boy begins to glow…. Baird’s quasi-satirical story emphasizes the tussle between high-mindedness and baser instincts.
Baird’s debut novel, which is at once a realist (and satirical) campus novel and speculative science fiction, depending on how one looks at it. The novel alternates between the eyes of different characters trying to make sense of the boy’s glow, including his father, a divinity professor.
A novel about intellectual passion, the professional ambition that cannibalizes it, and the chaotic space in which explaining the world, justifying your own existence, and making a living all collide…. Entirely true to life.
Compelling…elegant and precise…The Nimbus arrives at a moment when American culture is grappling with questions of truth, authority and meaning. What makes Baird’s contribution so valuable is his refusal to choose sides in the battles between reason and faith, skepticism and belief.… A beautiful argument for the necessity of mystery.
Baird elicits the consideration of a range of ideas not just about religion and belief, but also about institutional disillusionment, the fragility of intimate relationships, and the human desire to construct meaning in the face of the inexplicable. To focus on the novel’s exploration of weighty topics, though, belies how fun and funny The Nimbus can be.
The Nimbus is a hilarious and powerful portrait of faith (or perhaps more accurately the crisis of faith) in a secular and lost age…. Both big hearted and boundless in its spiritual examination.
[An] engaging exploration of power and powerlessness, religion and faith, belief and disbelief, the seen and unseen…. Baird’s tragicomedy entertains while also prompting reflection on the mysterious aspects of faith and belief.
Baird's debut carefully considers the role of faith in a world largely devoid of it…. Intriguing, entertaining, and often searing in its critiques of academia, this is also a fascinating portrait of a family pulled apart by ambition and unexpected events.
A caustic send-up of the campus novel…. Baird's satire takes no prisoners.… This packs a stinging punch.
Baird is brilliant, and so is his remarkable novel about faith, family, and the life of the mind. Read this wonderful book. You’ll be glad to own it.
I think that there are miracles in the world, but realistic novels don’t usually tackle them. Baird’s intelligence, compassion and humor illuminate this astonishingly original debut, which somehow manages to ask hard questions about how to live while also being enormously fun to read.
A big-hearted novel about the biggest questions—marriage, religion, parenthood, meaning. The Nimbus is comic and profound, a novel that practically glows. Robert P. Baird is a huge talent.
I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed getting lost in the pages of a novel this much. Set in an academic milieu that is captured with delicious precision, and populated with intricately drawn characters as intelligent and compelling as they are believable, The Nimbus is as humane and psychologically astute as it is entertaining—the kind of novel that reminds you why you read fiction in the first place.
Robert P. Baird has written a novel of remarkable breadth, one that ponders both the big mysteries (God, miracles) and the small ones (petty graduate school advisers). The Nimbus is a revelation, a book that explores our deep longing for something extraordinary in an otherwise ordinary world.
