'Razor-sharp’ Zadie Smith

An electrifying, prizewinning short story collection from the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen and My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

There’s something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories, something almost dangerous while also being delightful – and often even weirdly hilarious. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet; all yearning for connection and betterment, in very different ways, but each of them seems destined to be tripped up by their own baser impulses.

The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful, but beauty comes from strange sources, and the dark energy surging through these stories is oddly and powerfully invigorating.


One of the most gifted and exciting young writers in America, she shows us uncomfortable things, and makes us look at them forensically – until we find, suddenly, that we are really looking at ourselves.

‘Moshfegh’s writing is cinematic – vivid, immediate’ TLS

*NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*

'Savage, funny, frequently on the verge of teetering into lunacy...' Vogue

Discover this deliciously dark satire on modern privilege from the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen

It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

Our narrator has many of the advantages of life: Young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the heart of things, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents in college, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her alleged best friend.

Blackly funny, both merciless and compassionate – dangling its legs over the ledge of 9/11 – My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a showcase for the gifts of one of America’s major young writers.

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016*

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA NEW BLOOD DAGGER AWARD 2016*

Trapped between caring for her alcoholic father and her job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, Eileen Dunlop dreams of escaping to the big city.

In the meantime, her nights and weekends are filled with shoplifting and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father's messes.

When the beautiful, charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counsellor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted, unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship. But soon, Eileen’s affection for Rebecca pull her into a crime that far surpasses even her own wild imagination.

‘Fully lives up to the hype. A taut psychological thriller, rippled with comedy as black as a raven's wing, Eileen is effortlessly stylish and compelling’ The Times

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE STAUNCH BOOK PRIZE 2020**

A triumphant blend of horror, suspense and pitch-black comedy, from the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen and My Year of Rest and Relaxation

While on her daily walk with her dog in the nearby woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with stones. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body.

Shaky even on her best days, she is also alone, and new to this area, having moved here from her long-time home after the death of her husband, and now deeply alarmed. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession, as she explores multiple theories about who Magda was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But is there either a more innocent explanation for all this, or a much more sinister one - one that strikes closer to home?

In this razor-sharp, chilling, and darkly hilarious novel, we must decide whether the stories we tell ourselves guide us closer to the truth or keep us further from it.

**AN EVENING STANDARD BEST BOOK TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2020**

Discover the blistering first novella from the from the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen and My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

They said I've done something wrong?... And they've just left me down here to starve. Haven't had a drop in days more so...

Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of his name or situation or orientation – he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Now, McGlue wants one thing and one thing only: a drink. Because for McGlue, insufferable, terrifying memories accompany sobriety. Asail on the high seas of literary tradition, Ottessa Moshfegh gives us an unforgettable blackguard on a knife-sharp voyage through the fogs of recollection.

El libro del que todo el mundo habla en Estados Unidos.
Una novela sobre la falta de ganas de levantarse de la cama.

«Puede que esta sea la mejor novela existencial escrita por un autor no francés.»
Kirkus

En Mi año de descanso y relajación, Ottessa Moshfegh hace de Manhattan el epicentro de una civilización, la del año 2000, dominada por la apatía. Como una oscura bella durmiente, la narradora de esta novela decide encerrarse durante un año en su piso de una de las zonas más exclusivas de Nueva York, asistida por una herencia ingente y por una gran cantidad de fármacos, para dedicarse a dormir y ver películas de Whoopi Goldberg y Harrison Ford. El inicio de un siglo supuestamente trepidante encuentra a nuestra protagonista durmiendo en el sofá con la tele encendida. Con mucho cinismo, series, películas comerciales y narcóticos, y a costa de cortar todo vínculo humano, cualquiera puede sobrellevar esta vida. Ahora bien, ¿lo que queremos es sobrellevarla?

«Como esta es una novela escrita por Moshfegh, que va sobrada de talento, sabemos de antemano que va a ser una novela original y extraña. [...] Sus frases son penetrantes y viperinas.[...]Escribe con tal serenidad misantrópica que leerla siempre resulta un placer.»
The New York Times

La crítica ha dicho...
«En ocasiones es mejor dormir que vivir porque ¿quién es feliz realmente? Absolutamente nadie. Ottessa Moshfeg se ha enterado de todo y te ha escrito el mejor libro del año.»
Isa Calderón

«Indispensable durante estas semanas, por lo menos tanto como las mascarillas y el gel desinfectante.»
Paolo Giordano, Babelia

«Una historia distinta, muy propia para estos días de enclaustramiento que vivimos, no recomendable para claustrofóbicos, pero muy interesante para quienes quieran renacer de una situación difícil. Leed y sed felices.».
Mitxel Ezquiaga, Guipúzcoa a diario (Teledonosti)

«Tan refinado como perverso. [...] Un libro absorbente.»
The New Yorker

«Cuando nos recomiendan un libro normalmente preguntamos: "¿De qué trata?". Pero con este libro preguntamos: "¿De qué no trata?". Esta novela trata sobre el odio a una misma, el feminismo, la sexualidad, la salud mental, la familia, la industria farmacéutica... y ADEMÁS es la h*stia de divertida.»
Lena Dunham

«Ottessa Moshfegh es, posiblemente, la escritora americana actual más interesante a la hora de escribir sobre el asunto de estar vivo cuando estar vivo es una sensación terrible.»
The New Yorker

«Ingeniosa, oscura, cómica [...]. La novela se acelera hasta llegar a la que es probablemente la mejor última página que he leído nunca [...]: un retrato perfecto de alguien que desea con desesperación echarse a dormir para, así, finalmente, sentirse despierta.»
Vice

«Electrizante [...]. Moshfegh es una experta en la construcción de personajes femeninos cautivadores que transgreden las normas de la feminidad.