SHORTLISTED FOR THE BERNARD SHAW PRIZE

A woman's life, erupting with brilliance and promise, is fissured by betrayal and the pressures of duty. What had once seemed a pastoral family idyll has become a trap, and she struggles between being the wife and mother she is bound to be and wanting to do and be so much more.

The woman in question is Sylvia Plath in the final year of her life. As Plath's marriage to Ted Hughes unravels through the heady days of their first summer in Devon together, Sylvia turns increasingly to writing to express her pain and loss, yet also her resilience and power. She has decided to die, but the art she creates in her final weeks will set her name, and the world, ablaze.

About the Author

Elin Cullhed is a Swedish author who made her debut in 2016. Euphoria is her first novel for adults. It won the 2021 August Prize, Sweden's most prestigious literary award, and was a finalist for the Strega European Prize.

Jennifer Hayashida is a poet, translator and artist. She is the recipient of awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, PEN and the Jerome Foundation among others. Her translations from the Swedish include work by Ida Boerjel, Athena Farrokhzad and Iman Mohammed.

Reviews
An audacious, gripping novel . . . a book for our times * * Guardian * *
Euphoria is about the fissures between motherhood, love and creativity but is also a celebration of Plath's power * * Evening Standard * *
Compelling and visceral * * Irish Examiner * *
A novel about the conflicted emotional underbelly of female experience - including childbirth, desire, envy, rage, insecurity, ambition . . . Brave * * Times Literary Supplement * *
A sensitive and artistic account of a woman attempting to write herself out of oblivion . . . not a book about death, it is a book about art, more specifically, female art, and its resilience and endurance * * Sunday Business Post * *
Compelling * * BBC History Magazine * *
Imagines the hopes, fears, dreams and memoirs of [Plath's] final months, as well as the growing tensions between the worlds of creativity and domesticity. Based on archival research but explicitly a work of fiction, Elin Cullhed's book aims to focus not on Plath's death but instead on the complexities and contradictions of her life * * History Revealed * *


Awards
Short-listed for Bernard Shaw Prize 2023 (UK).



Book Information
ISBN 9781838855963
Author Elin Cullhed
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Canongate Books
Publisher Canongate Books
Weight(grams) 418g
Dimensions(mm) 220mm * 144mm * 29mm