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 * 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) * 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* * 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 * Moshfegh writes brilliantly bizarre. Her arresting fourth novel continues this tradition. * Mail on Sunday * Lapvona is a sublime work in the truest sense - mighty, irrepressible and terrifying. * ArtReview * [A] truly unique novel. * Times Literary Supplement * Like a twisted reworking of A Hundred Years of Solitude... readers will no doubt relish its icy intensity and Old Testament grimness. * Spectator * Weird, unsettling and exciting...Moshfegh writes like a dream - or perhaps a nightmare? * Eastern Daily Press * 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* * Brace yourself for a daring, dizzying fable about corruption. * Culture Whisper, *Summer Reads of 2022* * A strange, daring book. -- Lauren O'Neill * Scotland on Sunday * An addictive read... a curious, unjudging journey into humanity's craters. * Face *