Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is returning to the career she pursued long before her enormous charitable giving made her a global public figure. After more than a decade away from publishing fiction, Scott has announced a new novel that will be released free to readers in instalments on Substack throughout August.

The novel, titled ‘Last Days in Two Nations (A History in Eighteen Minds)’, runs to around 80,000 words and will be Scott’s third published work of fiction. She began introducing the project on 8 August, sharing its title page, table of contents, list of characters and epigraphs before the story itself begins unfolding serially.

Rather than taking the conventional publishing route, Scott has chosen to make the novel available through Substack without charging readers. The decision is particularly striking given that her previous books arrived through traditional publishers and her public identity in recent years has become far more closely associated with philanthropy than literature.

Scott’s return also closes a lengthy gap between novels. Her debut, ‘The Testing of Luther Albright’, was published in 2005 and went on to win an American Book Award. She followed it with ‘Traps’ in 2013. ‘Last Days in Two Nations’ therefore marks her first new novel in 13 years.

The project brings attention back to an aspect of Scott’s career that her wealth and philanthropy have increasingly overshadowed. Before becoming one of the world’s most prominent charitable donors, she had spent years developing her identity as a novelist. Her literary ambitions predated much of the public attention that followed her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Scott has revealed relatively little about the plot of the new book so far. The subtitle, ‘A History in Eighteen Minds,’ and the material released ahead of the serialisation provide early clues about its structure, but readers will have to follow the instalments as they appear to understand how its characters and narrative fit together.

The unconventional release also places Scott within a growing conversation about how established writers can bypass familiar publishing models. By offering an entire novel directly and free of charge, she is treating Substack not simply as a promotional newsletter but as the publishing platform itself.

For Scott, however, the significance may be more personal. Her public life over the past several years has been dominated by reports of enormous donations to non-profit organisations. ‘Last Days in Two Nations’ represents a return to the quieter identity that existed before those headlines: MacKenzie Scott, the novelist.