Historical Fiction spotlight
The Antidote
by Karen Russell
Dust Bowl Nebraska, 1935: a 'prairie witch' banks the memories her neighbours cannot bear to keep.
Buy the book
On Black Sunday, the worst duster of the decade rolls over the town of Uz - and every deposit in the prairie witch's memory vault goes silent.
Publisher's blurb
Synopsis
Russell's second novel follows a memory-keeper, a basketball star turned orphan, a New Deal photographer whose camera prints images that have not happened yet, and a scarecrow with a point of view. Beneath the tall-tale surface is a hard history of stolen land, foreclosed farms and a country's talent for forgetting on purpose.
The editorial feature
The most inventive American novel of the year and also one of the angriest. Russell's sentences are as lush as ever, but the moral architecture is new: every act of magic in the book is a metaphor for erasure, and she never lets the enchantment excuse the theft.
Book details
- Genre
- Historical Fiction
- Released
- 11 March 2025
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Extent
- 432 pages
- Featured on
- 11 March 2025
Where to buy
The Antidote is available from these retailers.
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