The Book of Goose

‘One of our finest living authors … propulsively entertaining’ New York Times

'Sly, profound … Electrifying' Observer

‘Wonderfully strange and alive’ Jon McGregor

A propulsive, seductive new novel about friendship, exploitation and intimacy from the prize-winning author of Where Reasons EndFabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnes, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised – the place that Fabienne helped Agnes escape ten years ago.

Now, Agnes is free to tell her story.As children in a backwater town, they’d built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves – until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnes on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.A dark, ravishing tale winding from the rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school, to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnes can live without her past. The Book of Goose is a story of intimacy and obsession, friendship and rivalry perfect for fans of Elena Ferrante, Ottessa Moshfegh and Kamila Shamsie.’Beguiling … A shimmering, unsettling tale of exploitation and manipulation’ Daily Mail’Brilliant …

A novel of deceptions and cruelty’ Spectator’For all its surface lushness, this is a novel of meticulous philosophical inquiry…resonant with echoes of… My Brilliant Friend, as well Elizabeth Strout… electrifying’ Observer

About the author

Yiyun Li is the author of ten books, including The Book of Goose, which received the PEN/Faulkner Award; Where Reasons End, which received the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; the essay collection Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life; and the novels The Vagrants and Must I Go. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Windham-Campbell Prize, PEN/Malamud Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, among other honors. A contributing editor to A Public Space, she teaches at Princeton University.