Chloe Aridjis was born in New York, and grew up in the Netherlands and Mexico City. She studied for a BA at Harvard, and gained her DPhil in nineteenth-century French poetry and magic from Oxford University. She then spent five years in Berlin and now lives in London.

"Chloe Aridjis has achieved something quite astonishing: a rethinking of one of our most complacent forms, the historical novel... The writer she calls to mind is the Modernist Haruki Murakami, with his unsolved riddles and ultra-cool characters. It is a book that you press on friends" -- Helen Rumbelow The Times "[An] exceptional debut novel... a beautifully turned piece of writing of extraordinary assurance... As natural as breathing. Both vivid and dreamlike, at once very precise in its images and also enchantingly broad-brush atmospheric, this is a debut more captivating than any I've read in some time" -- Daniel Hahn Independent on Sunday "The debut novel by the New York-born, now London-based, Aridjis comes highly recommended by literary heavyweights Paul Auster and Ali Smith, a choice emphasising both Aridjis's transatlantic appeal and her literary sensibilities" -- Lesley Mcdowell Scotsman "A hypnotic first novel about a young Mexican gal in Berlin who stumbles into friendship with an eccentric historian and the madness that ensues. This book has the power of dreams and still hasn't left me" -- Junot Diaz "A stirring and lyrical first novel by a young writer of immense talent" -- Paul Auster