Description

Sweeping from the bustling beaches of contemporary Lima to local ceviche bars crammed with fishermen, music and folklore; from the rise and fall of the Inca Empire to a civil war that will devastate a nation, The Dust Never Settles is a love letter to Peru.

‘A breath-taking writer of singular voice’ Patrick Flanery, author of Absolution

‘I have seen ghosts. They will not rest. The whispers of the past are all around…’

And running through it all, like the warm smell of orange blossom she remembers from her childhood, is Anais, who has returned to the country she loves after seven years abroad. Her beloved grandparents have passed away, and the time has come for her to sell the ‘yellow house on the hill’.

As Anais prepares to say a final goodbye, she is haunted by memories. Dark truths of previous generations are hidden behind these crumbling walls – secrets that threaten to overwhelm her…

Publisher Review

'A mesmerising feat of imagination and a masterful debut.' -- Paul Lynch, author of Irish Novel of the Year winner, Grace 'Lickorish Quinn's magnificent debut enchants from first page to last... A breath-taking writer of singular voice.' -- Patrick Flanery, author of Absolution 'Karina Lickorish Quinn is the new face of magic realism. She has given it, through Anais, a female body and soul... She makes it sing, she makes it work and she has built a world that stands on its own three feet. Like its title, The Dust Never Settles will stay floating inside the reader, impossible to forget or unsee.' -- Laia Jufresa, author of Umami 'An innovative and precisely imagined exploration of identity, family, ghosts, and the intersection between personal and national history. It swept me away.' -- Clare Fisher, author of All the Good Things 'The Dust Never Settles is ambitious, fascinating and endlessly inventive - a time-bending, kaleidoscopic fever dream in which the living coexist with the dead, and the past with present.' -- Luiza Sauma, author of Everything You Ever Wanted 'Karina Lickorish Quinn has rendered on the page a person and a place in all their conflicted histories so convincingly and dizzyingly and singularly that the very ink haunts. It leaves a shadow text on the reader's psyche. The Dust Never Settles is a marvelous, vertiginous work that mercilessly conveys the post-colonial state.' -- Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Wild Laughter