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Build Your House Around My Body

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022

Violet Kupersmith

$39.99

Hardback

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English
Oneworld Publications
02 November 2021
1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father, and is forever changed by the experience. 

2011: Twenty-five years later, a young, unhappy American named Winnie disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace.

 

The fates of these two women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Barrelling through the sweaty nightclubs of Saigon to ramshackle zoos, colonial mansions and haunted forests, Violet Kupersmith's heart-pounding fever dream of a novel deftly combines Vietnamese history and folklore to create an immersive, playful, utterly unforgettable debut.
By:  
Imprint:   Oneworld Publications
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 153mm,  Spine: 34mm
ISBN:   9780861540990
ISBN 10:   0861540999
Pages:   400
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Violet Kupersmith is the author of the short story collection The Frangipani Hotel. She previously taught English with the Fulbright Program in the Mekong Delta, and was a creative writing fellow at the University of East Anglia. She has lived in Da Lat and Saigon, Vietnam, and currently resides in the U.S.

Reviews for Build Your House Around My Body: LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022

'What a joy to return to the numinously spooky world of [Violet] Kupersmith and find the ghosts of history and family still haunting her pages. This impressively constructed weave of stories is gorgeous, completely original, and quite disturbing, usually all three at the same time. Beware! This book might swallow you up.' -- Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves 'A heady, gothic spellbinder of a book.' -- Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble 'Violet Kupersmith has elevated the ghost story into an art form. Her intricately plotted, flamboyantly original novel is by turns steamy, grisly, comic, horrific, and touching. This literally haunting tale will stay with you long after the last page is turned.' -- Valerie Martin, author of Property and I Give it to You Praise for The Frangipani Hotel: '[A] subversively clever debut collection... These stories - playful, angry, at times legitimately scary - demonstrate a subtlety of purpose that belies [Kupersmith's] youth.' -- New York Times Book Review 'In this auspicious volume, Kupersmith has reshaped and womanhandled traditional Vietnamese folktales that her grandmother told her into a wildly energetic, present-tense fusillade of short stories.' -- Elle


  • Long-listed for Center for Fiction First Novel Award 2021
  • Long-listed for Women's Prize for Fiction 2022
  • Short-listed for Center for Fiction First Novel Award 2021

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