History of Wolves

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE

'A writer with a great future ahead of her...her prose is exquisite' LOUISE DOUGHTY, author of APPLE TREE YARD

How far would you go to belong? Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in an ex-commune beside a lake in the beautiful, austere backwoods of northern Minnesota. The other girls at school call Linda 'Freak', or 'Commie'. Her parents mostly leave her to her own devices, whilst the other inhabitants have grown up and moved on. So when the perfect family - mother, father and their little boy, Paul - move into the cabin across the lake, Linda insinuates her way into their orbit. She begins to babysit Paul and feels welcome, that she finally has a place to belong.

Yet something isn't right. Drawn into secrets she doesn't understand, Linda must make a choice. But how can a girl with no real knowledge of the world understand what the consequences will be?

'One of the most intelligent and poetic novels of the year' New Statesman

Short-listed for Man Booker Prize 2018 (UK)

“So delicately calibrated and precisely beautiful that one might not immediately sense the sledgehammer of pain building inside this book. And I mean that in the best way. What powerful tension and depth As exquisite a first novel as I've ever encountered. Poetic, complex and utterly, heartbreakingly beautiful So much is accomplished here , not least a kind of trust that this writer will make everything count, including the kind of data that is usually left for dead in a story”

So delicately calibrated and precisely beautiful that one might not immediately sense the sledgehammer of pain building inside this book. And I mean that in the best way. What powerful tension and depth

As exquisite a first novel as I've ever encountered. Poetic, complex and utterly, heartbreakingly beautiful

So much is accomplished here, not least a kind of trust that this writer will make everything count, including the kind of data that is usually left for dead in a story

Emily Fridlund grew up in Minnesota. She holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. Her collection of stories, CATAPULT, was chosen by Ben Marcus for the Mary McCarthy Prize. She lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York. HISTORY OF WOLVES is her first novel.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE 'A writer with a great future ahead of her...her prose is exquisite' LOUISE DOUGHTY, author of APPLE TREE YARD How far would you go to belong? Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in an ex-commune beside a lake in the beautiful, austere backwoods of northern Minnesota. The other girls at school call Linda 'Freak', or 'Commie'. Her parents mostly leave her to her own devices, whilst the other inhabitants have grown up and moved on. So when the perfect family - mother, father and their little boy, Paul - move into the cabin across the lake, Linda insinuates her way into their orbit. She begins to babysit Paul and feels welcome, that she finally has a place to belong.Yet something isn't right. Drawn into secrets she doesn't understand, Linda must make a choice. But how can a girl with no real knowledge of the world understand what the consequences will be? 'One of the most intelligent and poetic novels of the year' New Statesman

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