The dazzling new novel by the author of the international bestseller
What I Loved, about the secrets and ghosts that haunt families from one generation to the next
Beautifully thought through, deeply serious and enormously intelligent
This passionately conceived, coolly delivered work is almost certainly the best American novel you will read all year . . . not to be missed
A mystery story that develops into a subtle and complex novel . . . sharp, confident, tolerant and civilised
This novel is easily described as wonderful . . . THE SORROWS OF AN AMERICAN feels like a very personal story and is all the more intimate for it . . . her skill lies in convincing the reader that we have seen right inside someone's soul
For all its cerebral riches, this novel is composed with superb artistry, Hustvedt handles the numerous interlocking narratives with immense skill. . . It is proof of Hustvedt's talent that the terrors of this novel feel real
This satisfying and emotionally rich follow-up to Ms Hustvedt's acclaimed WHAT I LOVED treads some similar themes: love and loss; the limits of perception; the drama of dreams; and the need to craft coherent stories from the unreliable fragments of memory. As with her previous novel, Ms Hustvedt's cerebral characters are tenderly drawn, wise and realistic . . . a beautifully sincere examination of the grim traps of over-active minds
A novel of deep wisdom and storytelling
'It is a rare writer who can both rouse the mind and grip the heart, and all the while provide the sensuous delights of image and language. In her new novel, as in
What I Loved, Siri Hustvedt does that and more . . . a book that's almost impossible to put down, and even harder not to re-read'
Siri Hustvedt is the author of seven novels including the international bestseller What I Loved, The Blazing World, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and Memories of the Future, as well as five collections of essays: Yonder, Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting, A Plea for Eros, Living, Thinking, Looking and A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women. She has also published a poetry collection, Reading To You, and the memoir The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves.
Hustvedt has won the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities and the European Essay Prize for her essay The Delusions of Certainty. She is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and has written on art for the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph. Born in Minnesota, Siri Hustvedt lives in Brooklyn, New York.