Missouri Williams – författare

‘A novel to marvel at’ SOPHIE MACKINTOSH ‘Like Karl Ove Knausegaard at the end of the world’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘Astonishing’ MICHAEL MAGEE‘Left me awestruck’ HANNAH MURRAY The acclaimed author of The Doloriad returns with a wildly imaginative new novel following a reclusive graduate in a campus love story like no other. In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss. One day, a campus scandal erupts: Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated conflict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination.As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe’s boss instructs her to gather information by befriending Adam. Agathe soon finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth?Coursing with icy suspense and rendered with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for a broken era. Missouri Williams holds up a mirror to humanity’s most intimate contradictions in a novel of blazing spiritual reckoning. ‘A singular brand of Ballardian ferocity – she revels in the wretched and the craven’GUARDIAN ‘Her prose folds itself into the literary legacy of writers such as Clarice Lispector, Anna Kavan, Rachel Kushner and Ottessa Moshfegh’ OUR CULTURE ‘The anti-feel good hit of the year’ FERNANDO A. FLORES, author of Brother Brontë‘Missouri Williams writes with a gothic angularity that puts her in a category of one. She swims in deep waters and surfaces now as a major writer for our age’ PAUL LYNCH, author of Prophet Song'Wicked and beguiling' AMY TWIGG, author of Spoilt Creatures‘Extraordinary imagination’ AMINA CAIN, author of Indelicacy‘Beautiful, disturbing … I adored this’ HARRIET ARMSTRONG, author of To Rest Our Minds & Bodies

Winner of the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2023In the wake of a mysterious environmental cataclysm that has wiped out the rest of humankind, the Matriarch, her brother, and the family descended from their incest cling to existence on the edges of a ruined city. The Matriarch, ruling with fear and force, dreams of starting humanity over. Her children and the children they have with one another aren't so sure. Surrounded by the silent forest and the dead suburbs, they feel closer to the ruined world than to their parents.Nevertheless, they scavenge supplies, collect fuel, plant seeds, and attempt to cultivate the poisoned earth, brutalizing and caring for one another in equal measure. For entertainment, they watch old VHS tapes of a TV show called Get Aquinas in Here, in which a problem-solving medieval saint faces down a sequence of logical and ethical dilemmas. But one day the Matriarch dreams of another group of survivors, and sends away one of her daughters, the legless Dolores, as a marriage offering.When Dolores returns a few days later, her reappearance triggers the breakdown of Matriarch's fragile order and the control she wields over their sprawling family begins to weaken. As the children seize their chance to escape, the world of the television saint Aquinas and that of the family begin to melt together with terrible consequences.Told in extraordinary, intricate prose that moves with a life of its own, at times striking with the power of physical force, Missouri Williams's debut novel is a blazingly original document of depravity and salvation. Gothic and strange, moving and disquieting, and often hilarious, The Doloriad stares down, with narrowed eyes, humanity's unbreakable commitment to life.

‘A novel to marvel at’ SOPHIE MACKINTOSH ‘Like Karl Ove Knausegaard at the end of the world’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘Astonishing’ MICHAEL MAGEE‘Left me awestruck’ HANNAH MURRAY The acclaimed author of The Doloriad returns with a wildly imaginative new novel following a reclusive graduate in a campus love story like no other. In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss. One day, a campus scandal erupts: Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated conflict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination.As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe’s boss instructs her to gather information by befriending Adam. Agathe soon finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth?Coursing with icy suspense and rendered with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for a broken era. Missouri Williams holds up a mirror to humanity’s most intimate contradictions in a novel of blazing spiritual reckoning. ‘A singular brand of Ballardian ferocity – she revels in the wretched and the craven’GUARDIAN ‘Her prose folds itself into the literary legacy of writers such as Clarice Lispector, Anna Kavan, Rachel Kushner and Ottessa Moshfegh’ OUR CULTURE ‘The anti-feel good hit of the year’ FERNANDO A. FLORES, author of Brother Brontë‘Missouri Williams writes with a gothic angularity that puts her in a category of one. She swims in deep waters and surfaces now as a major writer for our age’ PAUL LYNCH, author of Prophet Song'Wicked and beguiling' AMY TWIGG, author of Spoilt Creatures‘Extraordinary imagination’ AMINA CAIN, author of Indelicacy‘Beautiful, disturbing … I adored this’ HARRIET ARMSTRONG, author of To Rest Our Minds & Bodies

‘A novel to marvel at’ SOPHIE MACKINTOSH ‘Like Karl Ove Knausegaard at the end of the world’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘Astonishing’ MICHAEL MAGEE‘Left me awestruck’ HANNAH MURRAY The acclaimed author of The Doloriad returns with a wildly imaginative new novel following a reclusive graduate in a campus love story like no other. In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss. One day, a campus scandal erupts: Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated conflict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination.As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe’s boss instructs her to gather information by befriending Adam. Agathe soon finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth?Coursing with icy suspense and rendered with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for a broken era. Missouri Williams holds up a mirror to humanity’s most intimate contradictions in a novel of blazing spiritual reckoning. ‘A singular brand of Ballardian ferocity – she revels in the wretched and the craven’GUARDIAN ‘Her prose folds itself into the literary legacy of writers such as Clarice Lispector, Anna Kavan, Rachel Kushner and Ottessa Moshfegh’ OUR CULTURE ‘The anti-feel good hit of the year’ FERNANDO A. FLORES, author of Brother Brontë‘Missouri Williams writes with a gothic angularity that puts her in a category of one. She swims in deep waters and surfaces now as a major writer for our age’ PAUL LYNCH, author of Prophet Song'Wicked and beguiling' AMY TWIGG, author of Spoilt Creatures‘Extraordinary imagination’ AMINA CAIN, author of Indelicacy‘Beautiful, disturbing … I adored this’ HARRIET ARMSTRONG, author of To Rest Our Minds & Bodies