DARKLY HILARIOUS AND SEARINGLY RELEVANT, THE RABBIT HUTCH IS A POWERFUL PORTRAIT OF 21st CENTURY AMERICA, SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF THE UNFORGETTABLE BLANDINE

Winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2022 * Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction 2022

'Inventive, heartbreaking and acutely funny' Observer

Vacca Vale, Indiana: recently voted number 1 on Newsweek's list of dying American cities. According to the developers, however, it's a city with a whole history of reinvention, one that 'buzzes with the American spirit.'

Not everyone agrees though - certainly not the residents of the Rabbit Hutch, a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial centre, populated by a cast of unforgettable, disenfranchised characters. There's an online obituary writer, a woman waging a solo campaign against rodents and, most notably, eighteen-year-old Blandine, recently released from foster care and determined to stop the developers whatever the cost.

Set over one sweltering week in July, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America. Bold, experimental and brilliantly written, it will live in the memory long after the final page.

A Waterstones Book of the Year for 2022

'The Rabbit Hutch is 2022's The Secret History' The Big Issue

A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award * Winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize * An Oprah Daily Book of the Year, 2022

A New York Times bestseller, Sept 3 2023

A bitingly funny, razor-sharp debut about a motley assortment of residents in a crumbling apartment block. Welcome to The Rabbit Hutch.

About the Author

Tess Gunty was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Joyland, The Iowa Review, Freeman's and other publications, and she lives in Los Angeles. The Rabbit Hutch is her debut novel.

Reviews

'A firecracker debut. Seriously impressive... The writing is incandescent, the range of styles and voices remarkable... There's so much dazzling stuff here.'

-- The Sunday Times

'Inventive, heartbreaking and acutely funny.'

-- Observer

'Here is something new, a first novel with the wisdom and tenderness of a masterwork; an unflinching look at the down-and-outs that continue to rise and rise. The Rabbit Hutch is addictive, mesmerizing and unforgettable.'

-- Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

'Every now and again a debut novel comes along which is so accomplished you almost suspect the writer's name is a pseudonym for a mischievous literary veteran. Sure-footed, richly imagined and highly original, you could say The Rabbit Hutch is 2022's The Secret History... a profound novel full of clever, thought-provoking ideas.'

-- The Big Issue

'Original and incisive... Breathtaking, compassionate and spectacular.'

-- The Irish Times

'Throughout, tension is mixed with hilarity, heartbreak with hope. It all makes for a gripping, memorable debut full of peculiar wonders.'

-- Mail on Sunday

'Philosophical, and earthy, and tender and also simply very fun to read.'

-- Rivka Galchen, author of Little Labours

'Gunty writes with a keen, sensitive eye about all manner of intimacies.'

-- Raven Leilani, author of Luster

'Just when everything seemed designed for a brief moment of utility before its planned obsolescence, here comes The Rabbit Hutch, a profoundly wise, wildly inventive, deeply moving work of art whose seemingly infinite offerings will remain with you long after you finish it. Each page of this novel contains a novel, a world.'

-- Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated

'The Rabbit Hutch balances the banal and the ecstatic in a way that made me think of prime David Foster Wallace. It's a story of love, told without sentimentality; a story of cruelty, told without gratuitousness. Gunty is a captivating writer.'

-- Guardian

'Author Tess Gunty has the scope and acuity of David Foster Wallace, without the obscurantism and wilfully slow pace... Brilliant.'

-- Financial Times, The Best Debut Fiction round-up

'Strange, exuberant... Stylish.'

-- The Times



Book Information
ISBN 9780861543656
Author Tess Gunty
Format Hardback
Page Count 352
Imprint Oneworld Publications
Publisher Oneworld Publications