The Dust Never Settles

(Paperback)

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'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...' Anas Echevarra is returning to Lima to sell her ancestral home, the notorious 'yellow house' that looms over the sprawling capital below, its history woven into the fabric of the city. But concealed within its walls are spectres from the past that demand her attention, the echoing voices of the family who lived in this grand home, and the injustices on which both the country and the house were built. In Lima, where elapsed time coats every surface like a layer of fine dust, these ghosts will not rest until the sins of the past are atoned for. And, while Anas comes to terms with her history, the present threatens to overwhelm her. Pregnant, nervous and alone, what begins as an uneasy homecoming soon becomes a reckoning with secrets that refuse to stay buried. Perfect for fans of Isabel Allende and Kazuo Ishiguro, this hauntingly beautiful debut will seduce, entice and mesmerise.

Reviews

'Once inside this decaying mansion, [Anas] and we are transfixed by a series of spectres from the Echeverras' history. Lickorish Quinn's best sentences flow through present participles that conjure sights and soundsstrange, and spectacular.'

-- Sunday Telegraph

'A heady blend of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in which stories and visions proliferate dizzyingly in all directions, this isan impressive first outing.'

-- Daily Mail

'An absolute must-read. I was glued to its pages from the first to the last and am still struggling to believe that such an accomplished creation is Quinn's debut A wonderfully immersive experience.'

-- Literary Flits

'The writing is brilliant, the scope of the novel is quite astounding especially given it is a debut Did it make my head spin yes it did.Would I recommend it on to others yes I would.Would I read her next novel yes I would.'

-- Independent Book Reviews

'Lickorish Quinn's magnificent debut enchants from first page to last... A breath-taking writer of singular voice.'

-- Patrick Flanery, author of Absolution

'A mesmerising feat of imagination and a masterful debut.'

-- Paul Lynch, author of Irish Novel of the Year winner, Grace

'Karina Lickorish Quinn is the new face of magic realism. She has given it, through Anas, 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 DustNeverSettleswill 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 Settlesis ambitious, fascinating and endlessly inventive a time-bending, kaleidoscopicfever dream in which the living coexist with the dead, and the past withpresent.'

-- 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 readers psyche. The Dust Never Settles is a marvelous, vertiginous work that mercilessly conveys the post-colonial state.'

-- Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Wild Laughter

'Always colourful, its magical realism beautifully realised, this novel brims with Peruvian folklore and historyas Anas negotiates ghosts from the past and comes to terms with long-buried secrets.'

-- Daily Mail

'The sheer scope and ambition of this extraordinary novel mesmerises with its lucidity and force of imaginationA superb debut novel by one of the most exciting British Latinx voices of a generation.'

-- Morning Star

'Alove letter to Peru and Latin America as a whole, to the author's ancestors, and to the endless ghosts of the past. This ambitiously crafted book stayed with me long after I finished reading.'

-- Leo Boix, author of Ballad of a Happy Immigrant

'Rarely has a haunting been so eloquent and arresting, so painterly and polyphonic, demanding urgently to be read.'

-- Chloe Aridjis, author of Sea Monsters

Author Bio

Karina Lickorish-Quinn is a bilingual, Peruvian-British writer raised in Lima, the English Midlands and New York. Karina has a BA from Oxford University, an MA from UCL, and a PhD from Queen Mary University of London. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds. Her short fiction features in Un Nuevo Sol, the first major anthology of British-Latinx writers, published by Flipped Eye Publishing. Her work has also appeared in The Offing, Asymptote, The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, and Palabritas. In 2016, she was shortlisted for The White Review's short story prize. The Dust Never Settles is her first novel.