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Offseason

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What to expect

A blisteringly funny and transcendently deranged debut novel for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh, Patricia Lockwood and George Saunders

'One of the sharpest and liveliest debuts of the decade' VULTURE
'Obscenely good and very funny' CATHERINE LACEY
'A startling fever dream of a novel' LUCY ROSE
'So smart, weird and eerie . . . I recommend everyone buy it when it comes out' MADELINE CASH

In Offseason, our fiercely observant but self-deluded narrator finds herself teaching at an all-girls boarding school in a remote coastal town.

In between manic lectures that veer from Charles Dickens's Bleak House to the childhood maltreatment of her beloved Iosif Stalin and the generational legacy of the Holocaust, she implicates everyone she meets in her quest to pin down where exactly her own life went wrong.

Blisteringly funny and transcendently deranged, Offseason marks the arrival of a wild new literary talent.

'Indescribably brilliant . . . You've never read anything like it' ELIZABETH McCRACKEN

'A bonkers and beautifully written novel . . . Absorbing and original' NUSSAIBAH YOUNIS

'Yes, Offseason is hilarious, eccentric and gleefully mean-spirited, but just when you think you know what Sharp is doing, she will shatter your heart. I haven't read something so incisive, so slyly tender in years' LISA McINERNEY

'A narrator who makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar' MICHAEL CHABON

Critics Review

So smart, weird and eerie
Madeline Cash, author of Lost Lambs
A bonkers and beautifully written novel about family, frigidity and the world's most inappropriate crush on Iosif Stalin. Absorbing and original
Nussaibah Younis, author of Fundamentally
Ottessa Moshfegh meets Yorgos Lanthimos, Offseason simmers with wit and elegance. It's a startling fever dream of a novel. When Avigayl Sharp writes, it is impossible to look away
Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb
How does one describe a book as indescribably brilliant as Offseason? It is no less than a contour map of one woman on planet Earth, from the innermost workings of her mind and soul to her unruly body to the hilarious and hostile world around her. It is profound and uproarious, exciting and thought-provoking, unafraid and original, genuinely dark and yet also genuinely joyful. You've never read anything like it
Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of this Book
An obscenely good and very funny debut about the black hole of building your identity around the worst things that have ever happened to you. Unhinged in the best way
Catherine Lacey, author of The Möbius Book
To let us see the world reinvented through the eyes of a narrator who makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar, to have us laugh at what is painful and feel compassion when the narrator is lighting firecracker sentences to get us to look elsewhere-this is the eternal promise of the literary first novel. In Offseason, Avigayl Sharp fulfills that promise, amply, and with art and wit
Michael Chabon, author of Moonglow
I am a wholesale fan of Avigayl Sharp's fiction. Offseason, full of voice, reads like Sharp's been writing novels for years. Fierce, disciplined observations leap through this unforgettable story of departure and return in an America that has become unrecognizable even to the girls Sharp's narrator attempts to teach. Hilariously deadpan, mordantly sardonic, Offseason is a knockout debut
Jessica Anthony, author of The Most
Yes, Offseason is hilarious, eccentric and gleefully mean-spirited, but just when you think you know what Sharp is doing, she will shatter your heart. I haven't read something so incisive, so slyly tender in years
Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies
A 'sexually frigid, spiritually sick and morally warped' PhD student tries her hand at teaching English at an all-girls boarding school on the coast. Trauma dumping ensues. As does a wayward lesson plan on Bleak House and the troubled childhood of Stalin. Offseason looks to be the ultimate barometer of twenty-first-century malaise and Gen Z grumbles. But will anyone be able to stop talking about it?
Tatler's Buzziest Books for 2026
This voicey debut novel from a Paris Review contributor announces its wit on page one. Our bone dry narrator's bound for a teaching gig at an all-girls boarding school. A creepy seatmate is squeezing her foot, but she's the sort to allow it. An observer of catastrophes, come what may
Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026
Sharp's novel has traces of autofiction and a hint of Rachel Cusk. The prose sparkles, not least in the inventive imagery'
The best new debut novels, Financial Times
One of the sharpest and liveliest debuts of the decade
Vulture
Intensely observant and ineffably askew. It's a funny, sad, discomfiting, unabashedly weird book that I inhaled and haven't managed to stop thinking about yet
Colin Dwyer, NPR
Author Avigayl Sharp
Narrator Norma Butikofer
Duration 7 hours and 43 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781399637046
Format Audiobook
Publisher Orion
Genre Fiction: general and literary, Humorous fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction
Availability AU, GB, IE

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