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Stranger in Olondria

Sofia Samatar

$27.95

Paperback

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English
SMALL BEER PRESS
06 August 2013
Series: Olondria
Time Magazine: 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time

World Fantasy, British Fantasy, & Crawford Award winner

Jevick, the pepper merchant's son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick's life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. But just as he revels in Olondria's Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.

In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire's two most powerful cults. Yet even as the country shimmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of becoming free by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that seductive necromancy, reading. A Stranger in Olondria is a skillful and immersive debut fantasy novel that pulls the reader in deeper and deeper with twists and turns reminiscent of George R. R. Martin and Joe Hill.
By:  
Imprint:   SMALL BEER PRESS
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 215mm,  Width: 139mm,  Spine: 31mm
Weight:   382g
ISBN:   9781931520768
ISBN 10:   1931520763
Series:   Olondria
Pages:   320
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Reviews for Stranger in Olondria

Samatar's sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable. --Library Journal (*starred review*) A book about the love of books. Her sentences are intoxicating and one can easily be lost in their intricacy... Samatar's beautifully written book is one that will be treasured by book lovers everywhere. --Raul M. Chapa, BookPeople, Austin, TX Thoroughly engaging and thoroughly original. A story of ghosts and books, treachery and mystery, ingeniously conceived and beautifully written. One of the best fantasy novels I've read in recent years. --Jeffrey Ford, author of The Girl in the Glass Mesmerizing--a sustained and dreamy enchantment. A Stranger in Olondria reminds both Samatar's characters and her readers of the way stories make us long for far-away, even imaginary, places and how they also bring us home again. --Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club Gorgeous writing, beautiful and sensual and so precise--a Proustian ghost story. --Paul Witcover, author of Tumbling After Let the world take note of this dazzling and accomplished fantasy. Sofia Samatar's debut novel is both exhilarating epic adventure and loving invocation of what it means to live through story, poetry, language. She writes like the heir of Ursula K. Le Guin and Gene Wolfe. --Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners Imagine an inlaid cabinet, its drawers within drawers filled with spices, roses, amulets, bright cities, bones, and shadows. Sofia Samatar is a merchant of won-ders, and her A Stranger in Olondria is a bookshop of dreams. --Greer Gilman, author of Cloud and Ashes


  • Short-listed for Locus Awards (First Novel) 2014
  • Short-listed for Nebula Awards 2013

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