The Devil's Grip - by Lina Wolff (Paperback)

About the Book

"A woman arrives in Florence, overwhelmed by the strange, warm city so different from her home. Amidst the Renaissance architecture and amorous couples, she finds an unexpected love of her own. With his dark, ugly looks, people might stop and stare, wondering what someone like her was doing with someone like him. But he's the Mickey to her Minnie, and she can fix him-they can fix each other. She feels bound to him, body and soul. It's not long before the lying starts. Other women have begun to notice him, and she spirals into paranoia. Soon they're both cheating and lashing out, and she becomes more and more convinced he's not merely a violent man: there's a demon inside him, and inside her too. Their grip on each other is so strong, it might be impossible to break, even after she puts an ocean between them, following another man to New Orleans."--

Book Synopsis

Wickedly dark with a mystical edge, this story of an Italian love affair gone bad captures the irresistible pull of toxic relationships--from the acclaimed author of Carnality.

A woman arrives in Florence, overwhelmed by the strange, warm city so different from her home. Amidst the Renaissance architecture and amorous couples, she finds an unexpected love of her own. With his dark, ugly looks, people might stop and stare, wondering what someone like her was doing with someone like him. But he's the Mickey to her Minnie, and she can fix him--they can fix each other. She feels bound to him, body and soul.

It's not long before the lying starts. Other women have begun to notice him, and she spirals into paranoia. Soon they're both cheating and lashing out, and she becomes more and more convinced he's not merely a violent man: there's a demon inside him, and inside her too. Their grip on each other is so strong, it might be impossible to break, even after she puts an ocean between them, following another man to New Orleans.

Heady, unsettling, and shockingly funny with its dead-on descriptions of codependent and abusive relationships, The Devil's Grip takes us on a breathless journey with the shadow selves we can't escape.

Review Quotes

"This madcap offering from Wolff...zags from the heady sweetness of Florence to the mystical allure of New Orleans...rendered monstrously and magnificently. It's a provocative addition to Wolff's impressive canon." --Publishers Weekly

"[A] spellbinding novel...moments of beauty...glimmer against a background of persistent ugliness and depravity...keeping our focus locked on the page." --Times Literary Supplement

"A magnetic fever dream...a fast-paced novel, hypnotically translated by Saskia Vogel...[This] Lynchian drama about gendered, relational violence...is sure to mesmerize and terrify readers in equal measure." --Shelf Awareness

"Readers feel the oppressive, claustrophobic situation of being mired in a relationship detrimental to both body and mind. Tension surrounds the question of whether our protagonist has the capacity to escape...a frightening odyssey toward the understanding of self and of someone who is ultimately unknown to you." --Booklist

"Wolff is as cutting in her observations as she is knowing in her study of human behavior." --CrimeReads, The Best International Crime Fiction of the Month

"Deliciously disturbing, The Devil's Grip had me reading with my jaw open. Wolff's unique, ferocious voice shone in its tender depravity thanks to an expert translation by Saskia Vogel. I could not put it down." --Jade Song, author of Chlorine

"The Devil's Grip pulls you along like white-water rapids. A deceptively simple concept explored with relentless force, Wolff's novel pushes the calamity of desire into a territory both darkly psychological and brutally real. Hot with the fires of hell and cool with the eye of a masterful artist, this is an arresting novel, translated with chic perfection by Saskia Vogel." --Adrienne Celt, author of End of the World House

Praise for Carnality

"When an author succeeds, as Wolff does, it replicates the optimal sensation of intoxication...mind-bending...astonishing...beautiful." --New York Times Daily Arts

"A wild tale...has us hooked." --Nylon, Must-Read Books of the Month

"Spellbinding...Wolff poses fascinating questions about the nature of morality and attachment throughout the propulsive narrative, making for a triumph of ingenuity. Readers won't want this to end." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

Lina Wolff was born in Lund, Sweden, and lived for several years in Spain and Italy, where she worked as a translator. She arrived on the literary stage in 2009 with the publication of Many People Die Like You, a collection of short stories set in Spain and in the south of Sweden. In 2012 her debut novel, Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs, won the Vi Magazine Literature Prize. Her second novel, The Polyglot Lovers, won Sweden's highest literary award, the August Prize for Fiction, in 2016, and has been translated into seventeen languages. Carnality (Other Press, 2022) was awarded the prestigious Aftonbladet Literature Prize in 2019.

Saskia Vogel is from Los Angeles and lives in Berlin, where she works as a writer and Swedish-to-English literary translator. Her 2019 debut novel, Permission, has been translated into four languages. She has written on themes of gender, power, and the art of translation for publications such as Granta, The White Review, The Offing, and The Paris Review Daily. Her translations include work by Lina Wolff, Katrine Marçal, Karolina Ramqvist, Johannes Anyuru, and the modernist eroticist Rut Hillarp.