The Antidote

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An exceptional novel set in the 1930s Dust Bowl about magic, memory and land; above all, a reckoning with America's wilfully forgotten history 'Karen Russell is one in a million' New York Times From the Pulitzer-shortlisted author, an astounding novel about magic, memory and land, set in America's Dust Bowl. Visit the Antidote of Uz - a prairie witch who can keep your memories safe. Speak into her emerald-green earhorn, and your secrets, your shames, your private joys, will leave your mind and enter hers. Until the Black Sunday storm, which flattens wheatfields, buries houses and vaporizes every memory stored inside the Antidote. She wakes up empty - as bankrupt as America. If her customers ever discover the truth, her life will be in danger. To the Antidote's surprising defence comes Asphodel - young tearaway, girls' basketball captain and aspiring prairie witch - who won't take no for an answer. Along with her uncle, a Polish wheat farmer, and a New Deal photographer with an enchanted camera, they must confront what has cursed this town - its land on the brink of ruin and its people on the edge of starvation. Apart, they run from the memories that have brought them here. Together, they face down the storm coming their way. The Antidote is above all a reckoning with a nation's forgetting - the wilful omissions passed down from generation to generation. This gripping Dust Bowl epic echoes with urgent warnings for our own time, daring us to imagine what might have been - and what still could be. 'A brilliant writer with an amazing imagination' The Times 'Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude' Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

Reviews

Its magic, a book doing this big work and also making it propulsive, eminently readable. Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude -- KAVEH AKBAR, author of Martyr!
A brilliant writer with an amazing imagination * The Times *
Russell has deep and true talent * San Francisco Chronicle *
Karen Russell is one in a million * New York Times *

Author Bio

Karen Russell is the author of five books of fiction, including the NYT bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Swamplandia! was one of the New York Times' Top Ten Books and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzanes Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and two National Magazine Awards for Fiction. She was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists and selected for the New Yorker's 20 under 40 list. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she now lives in Portland, OR with her husband, son, and daughter.