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Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch

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What to expect

‘Riveting’ Margaret Atwood

‘I loved this book intensely’ Lauren Groff Guardian

The plague is spreading. The hundred year war is beginning. Katharina Kepler is believed to be a witch.

Known for her herbal remedies and successful children – among them Johannes, Imperial Mathematician and author of the laws of planetary motion – Katharina’s life is changed by an accusation of witchcraft. Facing financial ruin, torture and even execution, she tells her side of the story.

Witty, engaging and vividly imagined, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch draws on historical documents to illuminate a society undone by collective aggression and hysterical fear – a narrative with true resonance for today.

‘Darkly funny … Her prose, which recalls Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, is light, pared back and subtly archaic’ Financial Times

‘Superbly voiced … funny’ Telegraph

‘A magical brew of absurdity and brutality’ Washington Post

‘Galchen expertly weaves together a story told from multiple perspectives, showing how easy it is for a mob mentality to take hold in a climate of fear and ignorance when a woman simply exists outside of the norm’ New York Times

Critics Review

  • Praise for Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch:

    ‘Funny in parts, absurd in others … This riveting novel takes us into the labyrinthine hearts of accused and accusers alike’ Margaret Atwood

    ‘Superbly voiced … funny … the absurdity, rompiness and obsession with food (usually sausages) are spot on for the era, but so too is an inescapable sense of loss’ Telegraph

    ‘A wise meditation on the kind of hysterical scapegoating we see so often in the age of the internet … I loved this book intensely when I read it this summer and have thought of it nearly every day through this strange autumn’ Lauren Groff, Guardian

    ‘Her prose, which recalls Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, is light, pared back and subtly archaic. Moments where she nods at the contemporary obsession with witchcraft are funny rather than sincere … It’s this dry humour that makes the novel sparkle’ Financial Times

    ‘It is remarkable that Rivka Galchen’s “Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch” manages to pull off … a witch story that is as serious as Miller’s play and as playful as Updike’s novel but does not fall prey to the pitfalls of either … a persuasive and very beautiful work of fiction … this writer can animate even the most familiar material, and make it beautifully, and memorably, new’ Wyatt Mason, Wall Street Journal

    ‘Delightfully funny … Galchen has written another smart book that investigates the power of narrative, both good and bad, foregrounding a woman who’d only been a footnote to a famous man’s story, all while being funny and deceptively easy to read. It’s quite a magic trick’ Los Angeles Times

    ‘The comedy that runs through [Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch] is a magical brew of absurdity and brutality. Galchen has a Kafkaesque sense of the way the exercise of authority inflates egos and twists logic . . . There’s real sorcery here’ Washington Post

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