The Vivisectors Missouri Williams 9780008725280

'A novel to marvel at ... ingenious' SOPHIE MACKINTOSH

'Astonishing' MICHAEL MAGEE

'Wicked and beguiling' AMY TWIGG

The acclaimed author of The Doloriad returns with a wildly imaginative new novel following a reclusive graduate as her attempts to navigate campus conspiracies set her on a collision course that will upend her life.

In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss. One day, a campus scandal erupts: Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated conflict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination.

As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe's boss instructs her to gather information by befriending Adam. Agathe soon finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth?

Coursing with icy suspense and rendered with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for a broken era. Missouri Williams holds up a mirror to humanity's most intimate contradictions in a novel of blazing spiritual reckoning.

'Missouri Williams writes with a gothic angularity that puts her in a category of one. She swims in deep waters and surfaces now as a major writer for our age' PAUL LYNCH, author of Prophet Song

'The anti-feel good hit of the year' FERNANDO A. FLORES, author of Brother Bronte

'The extraordinary imagination of Missouri Williams' AMINA CAIN, author of Indelicacy

'Clever, wilful, daring ... I had such a blast reading it' SUSANNAH DICKEY, author of Common Decency

'Hypnotic ... this remarkable novel will haunt me for some time' SARA BAUME, author of Seven Steeples

'Beautiful, disturbing ... I adored this book' HARRIET ARMSTRONG, author of To Rest Our Minds & Bodies

'As brilliant as it is dark ... unlike anything I've read before' VULTURE

Missouri Williams is the author of The Doloriad, which won the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her work has also appeared in The Nation, The Baffler, The Believer, Granta and The Drift.

'Themes ripped straight from the head lines - can cel cul ture, pla gi ar ism, uni versity fund ing - are fol ded into a mirage-like nar rat ive ... the mazy sen tences buzz with mount ing dread and mord ant humour ... grips you with an invig or at ing sense of its sheer dif fer ence from any thing else out there' Daily Mail

'This is the modern rupture - our crisis of meaning and spiritual malaise shaped into a novel unlike any other' Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song

'A novel to marvel at - intricate, utterly precise, unfurling with the same lushness and strange menace of the greenery that creeps over the decaying city of its setting. An original and ingenious work' Sophie Mackintosh, author of Permanence

'An astonishing novel by an astonishing writer. Playful, digressive, and pulsating with existential energy ... I am in awe' Michael Magee, author of Close To Home

'A wicked and beguiling novel, written with the kind of precision other writers can only dream of' Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures

'Beautiful, disturbing ... I could read this book a hundred times and find something new each one' Harriet Armstrong, author of To Rest Our Minds & Bodies

'A clever, wilful, daring novel ... I had such a blast reading it' Susannah Dickey, author of Common Decency

'I thought of the dark strangeness of Bruno Schulz and Shirley Jackson, all while experiencing the singular, unbroken, and extraordinary imagination of Missouri Williams' Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy

'Delightfully grotesque ... The anti-feel good hit of the year' Fernando A. Flores, author of Brother Bronte

'Hypnotic and sublimely disturbing ... this remarkable novel will haunt me for some time' Sara Baume, author of Seven Steeples

'A writer of the first order, and I'd be surprised if there was a novel I admired more this year' Oisin Fagan, author of Eden's Shore

'As brilliant as it is dark, full of unsettling, revelatory allegory, and frankly unlike anything I've read before' Vulture