The Antidote

(Hardback)

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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. 'This novel swept me up and carried me away, even while somehow burying me, and digging up something about the story of this country I didn't know I needed to know' Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars 'Russell has rendered with soul and urgency the vast inexpressible ache at the heart of American gratitude' Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

Reviews

This novel swept me up and carried me away, even while somehow burying me, and digging up something about the story of [America] I didnt know I needed to know -- TOMMY ORANGE, author of Wandering Stars
Karen Russell is one of our most humane and generous writers; this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange -- LAUREN GROFF, author of Matrix
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!
Here in The Antidote, Karen Russel has summoned her singular brand of alchemy and created an epic of heart and devastation, community and laughter, death and life. A book that has it all. An absolute wonder -- NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars
Russell is truly one of the greatest writers of our time... every page is pocked with joy, beauty, wildness and the perfect wisdom of mystery -- RIVKA GALCHEN, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch
Russells prose is something to be savored... Her language is both lush and sharp, weaving a dreamlike quality into the story that makes the characters emotional journeys feel all the more visceral. Russell navigates these emotional landscapes with care and respect and the distinct gift she carries that is heavenI mean Love -- MORGAN TALTY, author of Fire Exit
Karen Russell proves once again that there is no limit to her extraordinary imagination. She creates marvels out of what we imagine to be the ordinary world, she turns the historical novel upside down and shake from it a thing of exquisite beauty that is unlike anything youve ever read -- DINAW MENGESTU, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
A brilliant writer with an amazing imagination * The Times *
Russell has deep and true talent * San Francisco Chronicle *

Author Bio

Karen Russell is the author of six books of fiction, including the New York Times 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, Oregon with her husband, son, and daughter.