Description

‘Fantastic’ The Sunday Times * ‘Beautiful, brilliant, powerful’ Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe

Part ghost story, part searing exploration of Vietnam’s colonial past, Violet Kupersmith’s debut novel is a must read for fans of Cecile Pin, NoViolet Bulowayo or Ruth Ozeki

Two young Vietnamese women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge.

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 Vietnamese-American disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace.

The fates of both women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Violet Kupersmith’s heart-pounding fever dream of a novel hurtles through the ghostly secrets of Vietnamese history to create an immersive, playful, utterly unforgettable debut.

‘Fiction as daring and accomplished as Violet Kupersmith’s first novel reignites my love of the form and its kaleidoscopic possibilities’ David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas

Publisher Review

'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 book a bit like the creatures within. It has fangs and claws. It horrifies and charms. It is the sort of book you force on your friends, just so you can talk to them about it.' -- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You and Starling Days 'A wide-ranging first novel that peels back the layers of a haunted Vietnam... Drawing from genres as diverse as horror, humour and historical fiction, Kupersmith creates a rich and dazzling spectacle.' -- Kirkus, starred review 'Creepy, exciting, moving, insanely funny: a sweat-soaked reading delight. Careering through a host of snaking lives, eras, and beautifully drawn locations in Vietnam, Build Your House Around My Body is mesmerising. An absolute triumph of storytelling.' -- Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and the City '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 'A brilliant, sweeping epic that swaps spirits and sheds time like snakeskin, Build Your House Around My Body is a marvel. Thrilling, witty, disturbing, righteous - I won't be able to shut up about how damned awesome this book is. Neither will you.' -- Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts 'This lush, sultry phantasmagoria of a novel is as playful, hypnotic, and bone-chilling as a cobra rising to strike.' -- Elisabeth Thomas, author of Catherine House 'Kupersmith's exceptional debut novel (after the collection The Frangipani Hotel) offers profound and original insight on Vietnam's tortured history... Horrifying and hilarious by turns...marvelously written.' -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) 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