Man Eater - by Ally Wilkes (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"A feverish jungle nightmare with an unforgettable antiheroine. I savored every poisonous word." --Sam Beckbessinger, author of Femme Feral

From the Bram Stoker-nominated author of Where the Dead Wait and All the White Spaces comes a feminist Gothic horror novel in which a botanist searching for a rare orchid encounters an inhuman presence lurking in the jungle shadows.

The jungle is alive, and it is...hungry.

1901. Minerva Sandford is an adventure-seeker, a botanist--and a reluctant wife. Part of a family of exotic plant-hunters, she chafes at the lack of autonomy in her chilly marriage and is horrified by her sole "purpose" being to produce a male heir. She leaps on the rare opportunity to accompany her husband Guy and cousin Dickon into the fevered Amazonian jungle, searching for the fabled "Man Eater" orchids. No matter what the cost.

As the search for the orchids--and the sinister tendrils of the rubber industry--drive the group deeper into the remote wilderness, Minerva begins to see things amongst the trees. A ghostly woman in green, impossible artifacts, plants moving in all-too-human ways...

Driven by her unquenchable ambition and guided by a secret map, Minerva draws the expedition into uncharted territory, only to encounter untold dangers from without and within. Under the canopy of eerie vines, her lifelong fight for control over her own body takes on ever-more horrific implications. The jungle is alive, and it seems...hungry.

Review Quotes

"Passions clash among British orchid hunters in this riveting, 1901-set tale of greed and vengeance from Stoker finalist Wilkes (Where the Dead Wait)... Equal parts psychological thriller and gothic body horror, Wilkes's latest grips while raging against atrocities perpetrated under colonialism. Lush prose and nightmarish imagery conspire with Minerva's increasingly agitated narration to foster all-consuming paranoia and dread. It's a furious feminist fever dream."-- " Publishers Weekly"

"Simultaneously sweltering and bone-chilling, Wilkes leads us on a timely expedition into the heart of human darkness. Bodily autonomy and colonialism tangle in a dangerous, vine-thick knot in MAN EATER."--Megan Bontrager, bestselling author of The Sea Hides Its Dead

"A thrilling journey into the deepest, darkest heart of the Amazon where nothing is quite as it seems. An horrific and uncanny tale that crackles with energy and comes with a dire warning against taking that which is not ours."--Lucie McKnight Hardy, author of Water Shall Refuse Them and Night Babies

"THE BELLADONNA EXPEDITION is a feminist fever dream told in gorgeous, shimmering prose. Original, compelling and beautifully written, it swallowed me whole - a Venus flytrap of a novel."--Emilia Hart, NYT bestselling author of Weyward and The Sirens

"A hot, hallucinatory plunge into the jungle of turn-of-the-century Brazil, where an adventurer and orchid-hunter finds much more than she bargained for. With MAN-EATER, Ally Wilkes has crafted a vivid, layered feminist gothic, rich with horrors natural and unnatural."--Sara Hinkley, author of The Red Sacrament

"Unreliable narrator, or just a woman living in an unreliable world? Ally Wilkes conducts an orchestra of terrors in MAN EATER, a breathtakingly brilliant feminist body-horror/bodily autonomy novel. One part The Ruins, one part The Lost City of Z, and about a dozen parts PJ Harvey and Bikini Kill. A must-read for anyone interested in seeing what a horror novel can be."--Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Carry Me to My Grave and Road of Bones

"A feverish jungle nightmare with an unforgettable antiheroine. I savoured every poisonous word."--Sam Beckbessinger, author of Femme Feral

"But what does a plant want? If a jungle had a voice, what might it say? Set in the feverish, immersive locale of the Amazonian forest, Ally Wilkes' MAN EATER is a gripping, propulsive read. A historical novel that is fiercely relevant, this is also a passionate, feminist critique of colonisation, marginalisation, and consumption. Minerva's intense journey will lodge in your brain like an insidious vine. Wilkes is the new voice of Tropical Gothic."--Tracy Fahey, author of Queens of the Crone Age, winner of the Rubery International Book Award

*PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF ALLY WILKES*

"Haunting...Ominous."
--The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Ally Wilkes, the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of All the White Spaces and Where the Dead Wait, grew up in a succession of isolated--possibly haunted--country houses and boarding schools. After studying law at Oxford, she went on to spend eleven years as a criminal barrister. Ally now lives in Greenwich, London, with an anatomical human skeleton and far too many books about exploration, the weird and the macabre.