Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022
A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORICAL NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022
A TELEGRAPH BEST FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022
A WATERSTONES BEST HISTORICAL NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022
AN EVENING STADARD MUST-READ NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022
ONE OF NICOLA STURGEON’S BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2022

‘Accomplished, immersive and profoundly satisfying’ Cathy Rentzenbrink
‘Effortlessly resonant … breathes rich imaginative colour in her characters’ Daily Telegraph

From the million-copy bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic novel about the infamous, ill-fated Booth family.

SIX BROTHERS AND SISTERS. ONE INJUSTICE THAT WILL SHATTER THEIR BOND FOREVER.

Junius is the patriarch, a celebrated Shakespearean actor who fled bigamy charges in England, both a mesmerising talent and a man of terrifying instability. As his children grow up in a remote farmstead in 1830s rural Baltimore, the country draws ever closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.

Of the six Booth siblings who survive to adulthood, each has their own dreams they must fight to realise – but it is Johnny who makes the terrible decision that will change the course of history – the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Booth is a riveting novel focused on the very things that bind, and break, a family.

‘In its stretch and imaginative depth, Booth has an utterly seductive authority’ Guardian

‘Karen Joy Fowler’s novels are wildly inventive and deservedly popular’ Daily Mail

‘Booth is a triumph!’ Ruth Ozeki

‘Captures with enthralling vividness a country caught in the grip of fanatical populism, ripped apart by irreconcilable political differences and boiling with fury and rage … An unalloyed triumph’ Literary Review

‘Brilliantly recounts the story of the American theatrical dynasty that produced Lincoln’s assassin’ Sunday Times Book of the Month

‘Her finest, most beautiful novel to date’ Neel Mukherjee

Publisher Review

Booth is a triumph! No one writes like Karen Joy Fowler. With wit, heart, and revelatory insight, she teases ghosts from their shadows, transforming the way we see the past, shedding new light on our troubled present. -- Ruth Ozeki Accomplished, immersive, and profoundly satisfying. BOOTH is both highly relevant to modern life and a fully realised piece of fiction. I loved learning about the Booth family and all their eccentricities, set against the backdrop of American history. I can't praise it highly enough, what a range Karen Joy Fowler has. -- Cathy Rentzenbrink Booth is a subtly devastating meditation on how the USA arrived at this troubled point in its present history by looking at a mid-nineteenth-century family. Its world - dense, granular, intricate - is created with immense care and precision ... This is her finest, most beautiful novel to date. -- Neel Mukherjee With each book, Karen Joy Fowler masterfully fuses style with subject, prose with plot, and explores the terrifying power that parents wield. Booth brilliantly cracks open the history of a country and a family and shows us the private secrets and suspicions that run underneath. -- Jonathan Lee, author of The Great Mistake The historical context [Fowler] offers is of a pre-Civil War America of deep moral divides, political differences tearing close families apart, populism and fanaticism run amok. The similarities to today are riveting and chilling. * Kirkus starred review * Fowler sets the stage in remarkable prose ... the nuanced plot is both historically rigorous and richly imagined. This is a winner. * Publishers Weekly starred review *