The Blindfold

Description

Iris Vegan, a graduate student living alone and impoverished in New York, encounters four strong characters who fascinate and in different ways subordinate her: an inscrutable urban recluse who employs her to record the possessions of a murdered woman; a photographer whose eerie portrait of Iris takes on a life of its own; an old woman in hospital who tries to claim a remnant of the ailing Iris; and a professor she has an affair with. An exploration of female identity in an age when the old definitions as some man s daughter/wife/mother no longer apply, fuelled with eroticism and a sense of menace.

Siri Hustvedt's first novel, The Blindfold, was published by Sceptre in 1993 and has since been translated into eight foreign languages. She is the author of a book of poetry, Reading To You, and her work has been published in The Paris Review, Fiction, and The Best American Short Stories. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

'A complex exploration of the nature of the self, executed in polished and immediate prose' -- The Times 'It has vivid and compelling characters; it is scary, sinister and readable ... a very smart novel' -- Independent 'A work of dizzying intensity ... an intriguing and sure-handed debut by a writer of eloquent and vivid disposition' -- Don DeLillo 'A dark mesmerising debut' -- Independent on Sunday 'A harsh, dark, dangerous piece of prose ... the whole resonates with shocking force' -- Vogue 'Her descriptions of the city and its manners are as amusing and polished as those of a practised essayist' -- Observer