Mislaid

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Startlingly radical, dazzlingly witty, unlike anything that has come before this is the most exciting novel you will read this year.

Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know. Jonathan Franzen
Virginia, 1966. The motionless deeps of the lake outside Stillwater College are being ruffled. Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, is determinedly fondling Peggy, an ingnue freshman with literary pretensions, in his canoe. So begins a long affair but the two are mismatched from the start.

The story that follows rocks the boat in every sense. Nell Zinks hugely entertaining, totally unique Mislaid explodes the nuclear family and topples every foundation of identity black and white, gay and straight, normal and very very strange

Reviews

Mislaid is that oft-discussed, rarely spotted phenomenon a Great American Novel. It catapults Zink straight into the company of not only Franzen, but also Donna Tartt and Philip Roth, Tom Wolfe and John Irving. Zink takes her big-name predecessors in her stride and goes that bit weirder An extraordinary talent Daily Telegraph

One of the most exciting debut novels that will be published this year Guardian

A bold new take on the classic mistaken identity plot Crazy as it is, Mislaid is also an ambitious and tightly plotted novel, a welcome successor to her dazzling debut The Wallcreeper Her novels are two of the most audacious and exciting Ive read in a long time Independent

Delicious Franzen might be right on this writer: Zink has written two books both worth talking about in the best salons in town, which will unsettle them in turn. Independent on Sunday

Zink appears to have sprung fully-formed on to the page, her narrative voice laconic and scalpel-sharp, and often shockingly funny in its dry asides and understatements Mislaid marks the arrival of an unusual and original talent, one fearless in her approach to language and subject. Where she goes next is anyones guess, but it will surely defy expectations Observer

Happily for the reader, the hype is matched by the quality and originality of Zinks writing Direct, provocative and self-knowing Things are never as they seem in Mislaid, a unique romp of a book that takes centuries worth of confines and stereotypes and turns them inside out Irish Times

The novels charm and intelligence run deep. Its a provocative masquerade with heart, not just an exercise in role reversals, reminding us that the gaps and cracks between our insides and our outsides are the spaces where our spirits live New York Times Book Review

A high comedy of racial identity Zink is a comic writer par excellence New Yorker

Funny, sexy and daring Charlotte Mendelson, Observer

Author Bio

Nell Zink was born in 1964 in southern California and grew up in rural Virginia. She attended Stuart Hall School and the College of William and Mary, where she majored in philosophy. Rather late in life she got a doctorate in Media Studies from the University of Tbingen, Germany. She works as a translator for Zeitenspiegel Reportagen and lives in Bad Belzig, south of Berlin.