Published in 2018
248 pages
Idra Novey is the author of the novel Those Who Knew, a Best Book of 2018 with NPR, Esquire, BBC, Real Simple, O magazine, Kirkus Reviews and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her first novel Ways to Disappear received the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize, the 2016 Brooklyn Library Literary Prize, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into twelve languages. She’s written for The New York Times, the LA Times, and NPR’s All Things Considered. She’s also translated four books from Spanish and Portuguese, most recently Clarice Lispector’s novel The Passion According to G.H.
What is this book about?
From the award-winning author of Ways to Disappear, a taut, timely novel about what a powerful politician thinks he can get away with and the group of misfits who finally bring him down.
On an unnamed island country ten years after the collapse of a U.S.-supported regime, Lena suspects the powerful senator she was involved with back in her student activist days is taking advantage of a young woman who’s been introducing him at rallies. When the young woman ends up dead, Lena revisits her own fraught history with the senator and the violent incident that ended their relationship.
Why didn’t Lena speak up then, and will her family’s support of the former regime still impact her credibility? What if her hunch about this young woman’s death is wrong?
What follows is a riveting exploration of the cost of staying silent and the mixed rewards of speaking up in a profoundly divided country. Those Who Knew confirms Novey’s place as an essential new voice in American fiction.
