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The Vivisectors

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What to expect

‘An astonishing novel by an astonishing writer’ MICHAEL MAGEE

‘A novel to marvel at … ingenious’ SOPHIE MACKINTOSH

‘The anti-feel good hit of the year’ FERNANDO A. FLORES

‘The extraordinary imagination of Missouri Williams’ AMINA CAIN

The acclaimed author of The Doloriad returns with a wildly imaginative and daring new novel following a reclusive graduate as her attempts to navigate campus conspiracies set her on a collision course that will upend her once quiet life.

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 threatens to rupture her carefully managed routine: 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 remains unmoved. But when her boss instructs her to turn double agent and gather information by befriending Adam, Agathe 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 and reflects them back through a novel of blazing spiritual reckoning.

‘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

‘Missouri Williams is a writer of the first order’ OISÍN FAGAN, author of Eden’s Shore

‘A clever, wilful, daring novel… I had such a blast reading it’ SUSANNAH DICKEY, author of Common Decency

‘Hypnotic and sublimely disturbing … this remarkable novel will haunt me for some time’ SARA BAUME, author of Seven Steeples

‘Fun, biting and wise’ ZOE DUBNO, author of Happiness and Love

‘As brilliant as it is dark … unlike anything I’ve read before’ VULTURE

Critics Review

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‘This is the modern rupture – our crisis of meaning and spiritual malaise shaped into a novel unlike any other. It’s part philosophical allegory, part depth psychology, within a cosmos marked by a profound alienation. 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

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‘The Vivisectors is a novel to marvel at – intricate, utterly precise, unfurling with the same lushness and strange menace of the greenery that creeps over the decaying city of its setting. An original and ingenious work’ Sophie Mackintosh, author of Permanence

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‘An astonishing novel by an astonishing writer. Playful, digressive, and pulsating with existential energy, Missouri Williams' newest contribution harkens back to the roots of the novel … I am in awe’ Michael Magee, author of Close To Home

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‘Missouri Williams is a writer of the first order, and I'd be surprised if there was a novel I admired more this year’ Oisín Fagan, author of Eden’s Shore

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‘A clever, wilful, daring novel … I had such a blast reading it’ Susannah Dickey, author of Common Decency

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‘As I read The Vivisectors, I thought of the dark strangeness of Bruno Schulz and Shirley Jackson, all while experiencing the singular, unbroken, and extraordinary imagination of Missouri Williams’ Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy

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‘Missouri Williams has paired the remote and mysterious style of the gothic novel with a narrator who you want to know everything about … fun, biting and wise’ Zoe Dubno, author of Happiness and Love

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‘Hypnotic and sublimely disturbing … this remarkable novel will haunt me for some time’ Sara Baume, author of Seven Steeples

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‘Delightfully grotesque … The anti-feel good hit of the year’ Fernando A. Flores, author of Brother Bronte

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‘As brilliant as it is dark, full of unsettling, revelatory allegory, and frankly unlike anything I’ve read before’ Vulture

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