Description
Discover the new novel from the author of TikTok sensation My Year of Rest and Relaxation.
In a village in a medieval fiefdom, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot in a power struggle that puts faith to a savage test.
Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, never knew his mother; his father told him she died in childbirth. One of life's few consolations for Marek is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him when he was a baby, as she did so many of the village's children. Ina's gifts extend beyond childcare: she possesses a unique ability to communicate with the natural world. For some people, Ina's home in the woods outside of the village is a place to fear.
Among their number is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the lord and governor, Villiam, whose hilltop manor contains a secret embarrassment of riches. The people's desperate need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by Villiam and the priest, especially in this year of record drought and famine. But when fate brings Marek into violent proximity to the lord's family, new and occult forces upset the old order. By year's end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, the natural world and the spirit world, will prove to be very thin indeed.
About the Author
Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands, her second and third novels, were New York Times bestsell ers. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World and a novella, McGlue. She lives in Southern California.
Reviews
Compelling... Moshfegh's bold venture beyond her comfort zone in Lapvona is a welcome promise of how much more she has to offer American literature today. * Financial Times *
What impresses here is not so much Moshfegh's abilities with character or narrative, or even her language . . . as the qualities Lapvona shares with a Francis Bacon painting: depicting in blood-red vitality, without morals or judgment, the human animal in its native chaos. * Guardian *
Moshfegh expertly creates a world with its own superstitions and laws, both timeless and topical. * Oprah Daily *
Moshfegh's genius is her ability to rip away the veil, revealing the horrors beneath, in writing so compelling, and bleakly funny, that we can't bear to look away. * i *
A witty, vicious novel.. . Moshfegh is one of our most thrilling chroniclers of the abject * Observer (USA) *
Booker-shortlisted Ottessa Moshfegh is likely to out-weird most things published next year - set in a medieval fiefdom, could it be a work of genius, too? -- Stephanie Cross * Daily Mail, *Books to Look Out For 2022* *
Deliriously quirky medieval tale . . . Moshfegh brings her trademark fascination with the grotesque to depictions of the pandemic, inequality, and governmental corruption, making them feel both uncanny and all too familiar. It's a triumph. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *
[A] truly unique novel. * Times Literary Supplement *
Moshfegh writes brilliantly bizarre. Her arresting fourth novel continues this tradition. * Mail on Sunday *
Despite its medieval milieu, Lapvona is a quintessential Moshfegh book. It has the warped earthiness of the author's first two novels... [and] a powerful undercurrent of allegory. * Economist *
Enjoyably disgusting - an effective...medieval fantasy. * Literary Review *
One of America's most celebrated authors continues her exploration of what fiction has to offer with a further digression from the standard realist purview and into fantasy... a fascinating premise, and I'm excited to see the yarn Moshfegh is able to weave. * Chicago Review of Books *
No one is quite who he first seems in the latest wicked tale from macabre master Moshfegh . . . Sculpting an eerily canny fabular world of contrasts and evil, cartoonish cruelty, in her signature way, Moshfegh conjures a grotesque, disturbing story of gross inequality and senseless strife. * Booklist - Starred Review *
A thrilling dissection of illusion and reality. * SheerLuxe *
Lapvona is a sublime work in the truest sense - mighty, irrepressible and terrifying. * ArtReview *
Like a twisted reworking of A Hundred Years of Solitude... readers will no doubt relish its icy intensity and Old Testament grimness. * Spectator *
Strange, subversive and utterly unique. * Grazia *
Weird, unsettling and exciting...Moshfegh writes like a dream - or perhaps a nightmare? * Eastern Daily Press *
[A] strange, disturbingly funny faux-historical novel. * Observer, *Books of the Year* *
A brazen, mordantly comic and decidedly odd examination of corruption... proving to be one of the most provocative and divisive reads of the year. * i, *Summer Reads of 2022* *
Book Information
ISBN 9781787333826
Author Ottessa Moshfegh
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Jonathan Cape Ltd
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 437g
Dimensions(mm) 222mm * 144mm * 31mm
