by Tom Rachman
First published 2023
Dora Frenhofer sits alone in her London home during the pandemic, her mind failing but her determination fierce. The once successful novelist knows she has little time left to finish her final book and salvage her reputation. She begins crafting stories about the people who have shaped her life: her missing brother, her estranged daughter, her former lover, her last remaining friend. Each chapter takes her across the globe, from New Delhi to New York, Copenhagen to Los Angeles, as she inhabits their perspectives and relives the crucial moments that defined her. Like a modern Scheherazade, Dora spins these tales to hold off her own ending. But as she writes, the boundaries between her stories and her life begin to blur. The real characters from her past emerge more clearly, and the pivotal events that made her who she is come into sharp focus. In her race against time and memory, Dora must confront what she has created and what has created her.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: race-against-time, unreliable-narrator
Setting: London, New Delhi, New York, Copenhagen, Los Angeles
Period: Pandemic
352 pages · Hardcover · Quercus Books
Content warnings: mental-illness