From one of our most provocative literary talents, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense
While on her daily walk with her dog in the woods near her home, Vesta comes across a chilling handwritten note. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body.
Shaky even on her best days, Vesta is also alone, and new to the area, having moved here after the death of her husband. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession: who was Magda and how did she meet her fate?
From the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen comes this razor-sharp, chilling and darkly hilarious novel about the stories we tell ourselves and how we strive to obscure the truth.
About the Author
Ottessa Moshfegh has written four previous books: McGlue (2014); Eileen, which was awarded the 2016 PEN/Hemingway Award and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize; Homesick for Another World (2017); and My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize.
Industry Reviews
'This is a story about what might happen when a woman takes charge... A glorious visceral mystery'
The Times
'Routinely hailed as one of the most exciting young American authors working today'
Guardian
'A new kind of murder mystery'
New Yorker
'Dark, devious'
Observer
'A fine line between shocking realism and the absurd'
New Statesman
'A brilliant off-kilter detective story'
Evening Standard
'A beautiful novel'
Sunday Times
Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands is a new kind of murder mystery... A haunting meditation on the nature and meaning of art... Death in Her Hands is the work of writer who is, like Henry James or Vladimir Nabokov, touched by both genius and cruelty. Cruelty, so deplorable in life, is for novelists a seriously underrated virtue. Like a surgeon, or a serial killer, Moshfegh flenses her characters, and her readers, until all that's left is a void. It's the amused contemplation of that void that gives rise to the dark exhilaration of her work-its wayward beauty, its comedy, and its horror.
Kevin Power New Yorker
Death in her Hands is a return to the dark humour that marks Moshfegh's work to date, making it sure to hit the sweet spot with established fans.
Hunger TV Books of 2020
An eerie, affecting book.
Psychologies
A darkly funny tale.
Sarah Hughes i, Summer Reads 2020
Moshfegh returns to the violent timbre of her debut Eileen.
Daily Telegraph
