Lapvona - Ottessa Moshfegh - 2022
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
Narrated by: Ottessa Moshfegh
Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 06-21-22
Categories: Literature & Fiction, Historical Fiction
Language: English
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Format: mp3 64/48 stereo
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY The Millions, Harper's Bazaar, New York Magazine, LitHub, AV Club, and more
In a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of 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 so 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 of 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.
©2022 Ottessa Moshfegh (P)2022 Penguin Audio
Critic Reviews
“Moshfegh expertly creates a world with its own superstitions and laws, both timeless and topical.” —Oprah Daily
“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 (June 21).” —Entertainment Weekly, 16 novels we're excited for this summer
“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
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