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Gone to the Forest

Gone to the Forest
Gone to the Forest
A Novel  
By Katie Kitamura
This edition: eBook, 224 pages
Availability: Available on or around August 7, 2012
List Price: $9.99
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FROM THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF THE LONGSHOT comes this gripping saga about the destruction of a family, a home, and a way of life. Set on a struggling farm in a colonial country teetering on the brink of civil war, Gone to the Forest is a tale of family drama and political turmoil in which fiery storytelling melds with daring, original prose. Since his mother’s death, Tom and his father have fashioned a strained domestic peace, where everything is frozen under the old man’s vicious control. But when a young woman named Carine arrives at the farm, the tension between the two men escalates to the breaking point. Hailed by the Boston Globe as “a major talent,” Kitamura shines in this powerful new novel.
"The death-throes of a colonial world captured in dark, obsessive prose, punctuated by images of strange, surreal beauty: the falling ash, the river of dead fish. One thinks at times of both Coetzee and Gordimer, but Kitamura is very much her own writer, and makes you feel keenly the tragedy of her three lost souls."
-- Salman Rushdie
"A watchful and magnificent work. From the first page, Kitamura is in complete control, both of the prose and of the story it carries. She is a skilled hunter and we are her helpless prey."
-- Teju Cole, author of Open City
“Gone to the Forest is a mesmerizing novel, one whose force builds inexorably as its story unfolds in daring, unexpected strokes. Kitamura’s prose brings to mind Cormac McCarthy or Jean Rhys, but the music of these lines is all her own--lyrical, sharp-edged, spare, and unafraid. Be warned: you’ll find yourself reading long past midnight, out of breath and wide awake. This is a bold and powerful book.”
-- Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge
“Katie Kitamura is a major talent. It is not often I read a book of controlled, illuminating, prose and it is even more rare that the story therein survives the style. I was reminded of the writings of Herta Müller and J.M. Coetzee, both important storytellers of our time and vanguards of form. Kitamura's spare, elegant and affecting work in Gone to the Forest brings the reader in and out of the nexus of three souls caught in a nameless land, in a nameless time, and gently observes as they try to give name to their relation to one another, to the land, to the times and to themselves. Gone to the Forest is a book of atmospheres and moods, details and desires and Kitamura handles the nuances with the grace and confidence of a writer beyond her years.”
-- Laleh Khadivi, author of The Age of Orphans
“I have been in a daze ever since I finished this book. Gone to the Forest is superb. It is so beautifully written, so balanced - there isn't a spare sentence or word in the whole thing. Utterly distinctive, it is almost allegorical in its force. Kitamura is of the best living writers I've read, and she gives the dead ones a run for their money.”
-- Evie Wyld, author of After the Fire a Still Small Voice
“Gone to the Forest is a stark, urgent, beautiful novel. Katie Kitamura merges history and fable to create an explosive narrative about people trapped by terrible events they cannot control, but in which they are also deeply implicated. Its themes are ambitious--guilt and innocence, power and submission, meaning and nonsense. The characters and images of Gone to the Forest continue to haunt me, a tribute to their lasting emotional power and their creator’s extraordinary gifts.”
-- Siri Hustvedt, author of The Summer Without Men
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