The Antidote

Karen Russell

$55

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

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English

Chatto & Windus
13 April 2025

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Horror & ghost stories; Historical fiction; Fiction: special features

An exceptional novel set in the 1930s Dust Bowl about magic, memory and land; above all, a reckoning with America's wilfully forgotten history

'Powerful' Financial Times 'A pure dust storm of utter genius' DAISY JOHNSON 'As profound as it is wonderfully strange' LAUREN GROFF

What do we choose to remember and what do we allow ourselves to forget?

Visit the Antidote of Uz - a prairie witch who can keep your memories safe. Speak into her emerald-green earhorn, and your secrets, your shames, your private joys, will leave your mind and enter hers.

Until the Black Sunday storm, which flattens wheatfields, buries houses and vaporizes every memory stored inside the Antidote. She wakes up empty - as bankrupt as America. If her customers ever discover the truth, her life will be in danger.

To the Antidote's surprising defence comes Asphodel - young tearaway, girls' basketball captain and aspiring prairie witch - who won't take no for an answer. Along with her Polish wheat-farmer uncle and a New Deal photographer with an enchanted camera, they must confront what has cursed this town- its land on the brink of ruin and its people on the edge of starvation. Apart, they run from the memories that have brought them here. Together, they face down the storm coming their way.

The Antidote is above all a reckoning with a nation's forgetting - the wilful omissions passed down from generation to generation. This gripping Dust Bowl epic echoes with urgent warnings for our own time, daring us to imagine what might have been - and what still could be.

'Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude' KAVEH AKBAR 'Karen Russell is one in a million' New York Times 'This novel swept me up and carried me away' TOMMY ORANGE

By: Karen Russell
Imprint: Chatto & Windus
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 242mm, Width: 163mm, Spine: 38mm
Weight: 646g
ISBN: 9781784745639
ISBN 10: 1784745634
Pages: 432
Publication Date: 13 April 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Karen Russell is the author of six books of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Swamplandia! was a New York Times Top Ten Book and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and two National Magazine Awards for Fiction. She was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists and selected for the New Yorker's 20 under 40 list. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, son, and daughter.

Reviews for The Antidote

Russell gets better and better with every word, she is a pure dust storm of utter genius -- DAISY JOHNSON, author of Everything Under Karen Russell is one of our most humane and generous writers; this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange -- LAUREN GROFF, author of Matrix It’s magic, a book doing this big work and also making it propulsive, eminently readable. Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude -- KAVEH AKBAR, author of Martyr! This novel swept me up and carried me away, even while somehow burying me, and digging up something about the story of [America] I didn’t know I needed to know -- TOMMY ORANGE, author of Wandering Stars Here in The Antidote, Karen Russel has summoned her singular brand of alchemy and created an epic of heart and devastation, community and laughter, death and life. A book that has it all. An absolute wonder -- NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars Karen Russell’s novel is generous, profound, and will stay with me for a long time -- KELLY LINK, author of Get in Trouble Brilliant... [Russell] writes like nobody else on the planet -- TÉA OBREHT, author of The Tiger's Wife A singular, haunting vision that fearlessly excavates the past and challenges the reader to face the future head-on. A storytelling tour de force * Kirkus (starred review) * Spellbinding... an inspired and unforgettable fusion of the gritty and the fantastic * Publishers Weekly (starred review) * Russell is truly one of the greatest writers of our time... every page is pocked with joy, beauty, wildness and the perfect wisdom of mystery -- RIVKA GALCHEN, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch