A Separation - by Katie Kitamura (Paperback)

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

Named a best book of the year by the New York Times, NPR, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, Refinery29, Town & Country, Harper's Bazaar, NYLON, BookRiot.

"Kitamura's prose gallops, combining Elena Ferrante-style intricacies with the tensions of a top-notch whodunit." --Elle

This is her story. About the end of her marriage. About what happened when Christopher went missing and she went to find him. These are her secrets, this is what happened...

A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it's time for them to separate. For the moment it's a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to go look for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she's not even sure if she wants to find him. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love.

A searing, suspenseful story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation lays bare what divides us from the inner lives of others. With exquisitely cool precision, Katie Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on edge, with a fiercely mesmerizing story to tell.

Review Quotes

"Kitamura is a writer with a visionary, visual imagination... In A Separation, [she] has made consciousness her territory. The book is all mind, and an observant, taut, astringent mind it is." --The New Yorker

"A slow burn of a novel that gathers its great force and intensity through careful observation and a refusal to accept old, shopworn narratives of love and loss." --Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation

"Fascinating, artful and atmospheric." --Paula McLain, Parade magazine

"Kitamura traces the narrator's thoughts in sentences striking for their control and lucidity, their calm surface belied by the instability lurking beneath... The more the narrator tells us, the less we trust her. And the less we trust her, the more this hypnotic novel compels us to confront the limits of what we, too, can know." --O, the Oprah Magazine

"A novel so seamless, that follows its path with such consequence, that even minor deviations seem loaded with meaning. Wonderful." --Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle

"Accomplished... a coolly unsettling work." --New York Times Book Review

"Kitamura's prose gallops, combining Elena Ferrante-style intricacies with the tensions of a top-notch whodunit." --Elle

"Kitamura weaves a novel of quiet power, mostly due to a narrative voice that is so subtly commanding--so effortlessly self-aware and perceptive, teeming with dry yet empathetic humor--that it's a challenge not to follow her journey in a single sitting." --Harper's Bazaar

"An atmospheric and emotionally sophisticated novel that reads like a taut Patricia Highsmith thriller." --BBC

"The burnt landscape, the disappearance of a man, the brilliantly cold, precise, and yet threatening, churning tone of the narrator--make A Separation an absolutely mesmerizing work of art." --Rachel Kushner, author of Creation Lake

"Unnerving... taut with quiet suspense.... It is wonderful to read a book that respects its readers in this way; Kitamura allows our imaginations to do much of the work." --NPR

"[A] slow-burn psychological novel, which rakes the embers of betrayal to find grief smoldering underneath... An absorbing tale." --Boston Globe

"Stylistically ambitious and psychologically rich... A Separation is a work of great intensity and originality... There are deft meditations on the art of translation and the ritual of mourning, and sharp insight into what binds and divides lovers.... This is the book that elevates Kitamura to a different league." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Profound and gripping. I had that rare sense of feeling like I was in a creation specifically made out of words, that couldn't have been made out of any other substance. Kitamura combines the calm complexity of Joseph Conrad with the pacing and reveal of Patricia Highsmith. This novel is a wonder and a pleasure." --Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch

"A Separation opens up fissures of ambiguity in emotional experiences too often misunderstood as monolithic--grief, desire, estrangement--and plumbs these crevices for all their complexities. It has both urgency and afterglow: I read it quickly, but didn't stop thinking about it for a long time once I was done." --Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story

"Hemingway's returned to life--and this time, he's a woman." --Tom McCarthy, author of The Making of Incarnation

"A mesmerizing novel, one whose force builds inexorably as its story unfolds in daring, unexpected strokes... Be warned: you'll find yourself reading long past midnight, out of breath and wide awake. This is a bold and powerful book." --Julie Orringer, author of Luna, Phoenix, Queen

"A watchful and magnificent work. From the first page, Kitamura is in complete control, both of the prose and the story it carries. She is a skilled hunter and we are her helpless prey." --Teju Cole, author of Open City
"Thrilling ...smart, spare...Kitamura gives us a book that's worth reading for its inventive cadences alone. And there's more to it than that: surprising turns and honest thoughts on the complexity of loss." --Huffington Post

"Tautly austere, lyrical and jarring...For readers seeking profound examinations of challenging relationships . . . Kitamura's oeuvre will be a compelling discovery." --Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW

"Spare and stunning ... [B]uilds into a hypnotic meditation on infidelity and the unknowability of one's spouse." --Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW

"Brilliantly written and reminiscent of Gone Girl." --InStyle

About the Author