A literary novel which follows present-day narrator Mathilda's fixation with the forgotten black Scottish modernist poet, Hermia Druitt, LOTE is an exploration of aesthetics, Beauty, and the ephemeral realm in which they exist.
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Summary
A literary novel which follows present-day narrator Mathilda's fixation with the forgotten black Scottish modernist poet, Hermia Druitt, LOTE is an exploration of aesthetics, Beauty, and the ephemeral realm in which they exist.
Description
WINNER of the James Tait Black Prize 2021 and The Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021.
As seen in Document Journal, Guardian and The White ReviewLush and frothy, incisive and witty, Shola von Reinhold's decadent queer literary debut immerses readers in the pursuit of aesthetics and beauty, while interrogating the removal and obscurement of Black figures from history.Solitary Mathilda has long been enamored with the 'Bright Young Things' of the 20s, and throughout her life, her attempts at reinvention have mirrored their extravagance and artfulness. After discovering a photograph of the forgotten Black modernist poet Hermia Druitt, who ran in the same circles as the Bright Young Things that she adores, Mathilda becomes transfixed and resolves to learn as much as she can about the mysterious figure. Her search brings her to a peculiar artists' residency in Dun, a small European town Hermia was known to have lived in during the 30s. The artists' residency throws her deeper into a lattice of secrets and secret societies that takes hold of her aesthetic imagination, but will she be able to break the thrall of her Transfixions?From champagne theft and Black Modernisms, to art sabotage, alchemy and lotus-eating proto-luxury communist cults, Mathilda's journey through modes of aesthetic expression guides her to truth and the convoluted ways it is made and obscured.Critic Reviews
“"Reaffirms pleasure at the heart of the novel... rich with intrigue and suspense" - Guy Gunaratne, Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021 Judge”
It's funny and weird and dazzlingly clever. -- Alice Winn The Guardian
a celebration of eccentric esprit -- Houman Barekat The Guardian
Lote is a magical, revolutionary piece of writing FRIEZE
An inspirational, cutting, exquisitely written, multilevel excavation of forgotten Black lives and an Afro-queer celebration of art, aesthetics, literature, and society. -- Paul Mendez author of Rainbow Milk
LOTE is very very very close to being a masterpiece (and one could make the case that it's so close that it is one)...
...it's fucking brilliant - provocative, raucously funny, intelligent without being smarmy and uses multiple voices of alleged different sources.
Read LOTE, it's great.
An inspirational, cutting, exquisitely written, multilevel excavation of forgotten Black lives and an Afro-queer celebration of art, aesthetics, literature, and society. -- Paul Mendez author of Rainbow Milk
...phenomenal writing. [Shola has] a clear talent for describing emotions, people, places, colours and textures so vividly and I loved their ability to capture life's more absurd moments (I'm thinking of the Pousse Café Royal cocktail in particular). LOTE has a serious message at its core, a message that will certainly inform my intersectional feminist activism moving forwards, especially as a white, middle-class, straight woman. But LOTE is just as much a joyful celebration of Black culture that gloriously succeeds at reappropriating eccentricity, usually reserved for white members of the aristocracy, through a Black, queer lens. -- Louise Binns The Mistress Of Books
About the Author
Shola von Reinhold is a writer and artist born and based in Glasgow. Published in the Cambridge Literary Review and The Stockholm Review, Shola was Cove Park's Scottish Emerging Writer 2018 and has won a Dewar Award for Literature. LOTE is her debut novel.
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