Lapvona

bury the dead. He wanted to be helpful, but cowered when the bodies were laid out on the thick grass of the cemetery and the men took up their shovels. The heads of the dead were covered only in thin cloths. Marek imagined that their faces were still alive. He could see their eyelashes grazing the fabric as a soft wind blew. He saw the outlines of their lips and thought they were moving, speaking to him, warning him to get away. The children's bodies looked like wooden dolls, stiff and adorable. Marek crossed himself and retreated back to the road. The men of the village dug the trench easily without him anyway. Nobody cared that Marek had come and gone. He was like a stray dog that wandered in and out of the village from time to time, and everyone knew he was a bastard.

 

Marek was a small boy and had grown crookedly, his spine twisted in the middle so that the right side of his rib cage protruded from his torso, which caused his arm to find its only comfort resting, half bent, across his belly. His left arm hung loose from its socket. His legs were bowed. His head was also misshapen, although he hid his skull under a tattered knit hat and bright red hair that had never once been brushed or cut. His father-whose long, uncut hair was brown-admonished vanity as a cardinal sin. There were no mirrors in their humble home in the pasture, not that they had any earnings to afford one. Jude was the oldest bachelor in Lapvona. Other men took their young cousins as their wives if they needed one-women often died in childbirth-or traded a few sheep or pigs to a village in the north for a tall girl to marry.

 

Jude could never bear to see his reflection, not even in the clear, icy stream that ran through the valley or in the lake where he went to bathe a few times a year. He also believed that Marek ought not see himself. He was glad to have a son and not a daughter, whose lack of beauty would be much more injurious. Marek was ugly. And fragile. Not at all

making it kind of fun. Nylon

Lapvona tells the story of a shepherd s son who comes fatally close to the rulers of a medieval fiefdom. Moshfegh, following up on her acclaimed My Year of Rest and Relaxation continues to plumb entitlement and class; here, she adds magic and revenge. Chicago Tribune
 
Lapvona is a witty, vicious novel, frothing at the mouth at the opportunity to indict all the worst habits and orientations of our contemporary. . . . Moshfegh is one of our most thrilling chroniclers of the abject she is a delighted documentarian of all the excrescences and defilements of the body which force us to reckon with our inevitable decay, or what the French philosopher Julia Kristeva might term our future-deadness. Perhaps the great evolution at hand in Moshfegh s ongoing corpus is the fact of Lapvona s rather full-throated politicism. This is at heart a fable of haves and have nots, of the ways violent psychologies and apparatuses of exploitation of the poor, of resources, of women s bodies, of the land and earth itself constitute a significant stratum, if not the very bedrock, of the human condition. The Observer

Moshfegh has proven herself to be one of the most immaculate crafters of disturbed, unreliable first-person narrators . . . . Moshfegh s voice is part Dostoevsky, part Poe, and entirely her own . . . If anybody would be apt to get into the weird head space of our current moment it s Moshfegh. The Millions

The author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, EW's pick for the best book of 2018, turns her inimitable lens to a medieval fiefdom ruled by deeply tribal ideas of class, family, and faith. The result reads like a cracked fairy tale, both familiar and fantastically strange. Entertainment Weekly, "16 novels we're excited for this summer"

Vividly brutal and low-key fantastical new historical novel . . . Lapvona is a sardonic multi-perspective exploration of a society ruled by barbarity, ignorance, corruption, and religion. Philadelphia Inquirer s Summer Preview

You won t want to put down Lapvona, a medieval fantasy that feels like a fairy tale adapted by Margaret Atwood or Ursula K. LeGuin. Barnes & Nobles, Our Most Anticipated New Book Releases of June 2022

Delightfully weird and full of the richly painted characters and captivating story that makes Moshfegh a master of her craft, this historical fiction throws readers back into Medieval times so completely, you can smell the sheep dung. You'll meet a motherless shepherd, a sadistic lord, a wet nurse with occult powers and a priest whose own faith is tested by devastating famine and drought. Good Housekeeping, The 40 Best New Books of 2022 (So Far) That You Won't Be Able to Put Down

Ottessa Moshfegh brings her trademark brutality to the Middle Ages in this allegorical pandemic novel. . . . interrogating the role faith plays in social and environmental abuses of power. Adam Morgan, The Scientific American

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

At once immensely alien and deeply human, Moshfegh s latest is a brutal, inventive novel about the ways that stories and the act of storytelling shape us and articulate our world. Library Journal (starred review)

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)

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. Lapvona promises to chronicle the life of Ina, a blind midwife in a medieval village. Ina s talent doesn t stop at childcare, and allows her a special connection with the surrounding natural world. It s a fascinating premise, and I m excited to see the yarn Moshfegh is able to weave. Chicago Review of Books