‘Do you have to stare like that?’ I asked.

‘Think about the actors in porn. They’ve got no problem showing themselves off.’ ‘

Think about when I broke your nose,’ I replied.

Ellinor is thirty-six. She wears soft black sweatpants and a Michelin Man jacket. She fights. She tries her hand at online dating, only to find herself stranded by a snowstorm in Stockholm and at the heart of a literary intrigue. Cut to Max Lamas, author, who dreams of a polyglot lover, a woman who will understand him - in every tongue. His search takes him to Italy, where he befriends a marchesa on the brink of ruin, and where her granddaughter, Lucrezia, brings this tale to its final, shocking conclusion.

‘It’s been a long time since I read something this unique, seething, wilful’ - Svenska Dagbladet

‘This strange, provocative debut sits well alongside the work of Roxanne Gay, Katherine Angel, Maggie Nelson, Zoe Pilger and Miranda July…a cool, clever and fierce addition to the canon of modern feminist literature’ - Sarah Perry, The Guardian

‘A thoroughly invigorating novel’ - Lucy Scholes, The Independent