Lapvona: The unmissable Sunday Times Bestseller

Description

Brace yourself for Lapvona- a rollercoaster ride of depravation and perversion in the singular new novel from Ottessa Moshfegh, author My Year of Rest and Relaxation From the author of TikTok sensation My Year of Rest and Relaxation. NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY Guardian, Harper's Bazaar, The Times, New Statesman, Good Housekeeping & Daily Mail. In a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot in a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test, in a spellbinding novel that represents Ottessa Moshfegh's most exciting leap yet 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 for many of the village's children. Ina's gifts extend beyond childcare- she possesses a unique ability to communicate with the natural world. Her gift often brings her the transmission of sacred knowledge on levels far beyond those available to other villagers, however religious they might be. For some people, Ina's home in the woods outside the village is a place to fear and to avoid, a godless place. Among their number is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the depraved 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.

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.

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 * 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) * 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 *