FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF WHAT I LOVED

'A work of dizzying intensity . . . an intriguing and sure-handed debut ' Don DeLillo

'Brilliant . . . a dark, mesmerising debut' Independent on Sunday

'Hustvedt has pulled off nothing less than a re-mapping of the modern feminist psyche' Daily Telegraph

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.

'Attests to Hustvedt's thoroughly original style and her lucid contemporary voice . . . the announcement of a talented writer's arrival' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times


PRAISE FOR SIRI HUSTVEDT:

'Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer of high intelligence, profound sensuality and a less easily definable capacity for which the only word I can find is wisdom' Salman Rushdie

'One of our finest novelists' Oliver Sacks

'Reading a Hustvedt novel is like consuming the best of David Lynch' Financial Times

'Few contemporary writers are as satisfying and stimulating to read as Siri Hustvedt' Washington Post

The dazzling debut of Siri Hustvedt, author of the international bestseller WHAT I LOVED.

About the Author

Siri Hustvedt is the author of seven novels including the international bestseller What I Loved, The Blazing World, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and Memories of the Future, as well as five collections of essays: Yonder, Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting, A Plea for Eros, Living, Thinking, Looking and A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women. She has also published a poetry collection, Reading To You, and the memoir The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves.

Hustvedt has won the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities and the European Essay Prize for her essay The Delusions of Certainty. She is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and has written on art for the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph. Born in Minnesota, Siri Hustvedt lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews
Gripping...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 *
Brilliant...A dark, mesmerising debut * Independent on Sunday *
'Hustvedt has pulled off nothing less than a re-mapping of the modern feminist psyche...The quality and spareness of her prose, the intensity of her imagination, are at work on one of the most macabre terrains of the 20th century - New York' * Daily Telegraph *
A harsh, dark, dangerous piece of prose...Sharply readable, quirky and entertaining in its witty observation of student and city life, but the whole resonates with shocking force * Vogue *
A work of dizzying intensity ... an intriguing and sure-handed debut by a writer of eloquent and vivid disposition * Don DeLillo *
'Sexy without being steamy, intelligent without being complicated' * New Statesman *



Book Information
ISBN 9780340581230
Author Siri Hustvedt
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Sceptre
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
Weight(grams) 186g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 128mm * 16mm