AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2022 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE FINALIST FOR
THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2021 Named
a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times The Washington Post TIME NPR The Financial
Times Good Housekeeping Esquire Vulture Marie Claire Vox The Los Angeles Times USA
Today and more! “A relentless exhibition of Groff’s freakish talent. In just over 250 pages
she gives us a character study to rival Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell .” – USA Today “An
electric reimagining . . . feminist sensual . . . unforgettable.” – O The Oprah Magazine
“Thrilling and heartbreaking.” – Time Magazine “[A] page-by-page pleasure as we soar with
her.” –New York Times One of our best American writers and a uthor of the highly anticipated
THE VASTER WILDS Lauren Groff returns with this exhilarating and groundbreaking novel Cast
out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage
or courtly life seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress
of an impoverished abbey its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first
taken aback by the severity of her new life Marie finds focus and love in collective life with
her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible Marie steadily supplants her desire for
family for her homeland for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to
her sisters and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie born the last in a long line of
women warriors and crusaders is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now
leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways one that
can never reconcile itself with her existence will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be
bulwark enough? Equally alive to the sacred and the profane Matrix gathers currents of
violence sensuality and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion
aberrant faith and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff’s new
novel her first since Fates and Furies is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power
of female creativity in a corrupted world.
