Awards

• Long-listed for Center for Fiction First Novel Award 2021
• Long-listed for Women's Prize for Fiction 2022
• Short-listed for Center for Fiction First Novel Award 2021

Overview

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9780861540990

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Reviews

'What a joy to return to the numinously spooky world of [Violet] Kupersmith and find the ghosts of history and family still haunting her pages. This impressively constructed weave of stories is gorgeous, completely original, and quite disturbing, usually all three at the same time. Beware! This book might swallow you up.' -- Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves 'A heady, gothic spellbinder of a book.' -- Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble 'Violet Kupersmith has elevated the ghost story into an art form. Her intricately plotted, flamboyantly original novel is by turns steamy, grisly, comic, horrific, and touching. This literally haunting tale will stay with you long after the last page is turned.' -- Valerie Martin, author of Property and I Give it to You Praise for The Frangipani Hotel: '[A] subversively clever debut collection... These stories - playful, angry, at times legitimately scary - demonstrate a subtlety of purpose that belies [Kupersmith's] youth.' -- New York Times Book Review 'In this auspicious volume, Kupersmith has reshaped and womanhandled traditional Vietnamese folktales that her grandmother told her into a wildly energetic, present-tense fusillade of short stories.' -- Elle

'What a joy to return to the numinously spooky world of [Violet] Kupersmith and find the ghosts of history and family still haunting her pages. This impressively constructed weave of stories is gorgeous, completely original, and quite disturbing, usually all three at the same time. Beware! This book might swallow you up.' -- Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves 'A book a bit like the creatures within. It has fangs and claws. It horrifies and charms. It is the sort of book you force on your friends, just so you can talk to them about it.' -- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You and Starling Days 'A wide-ranging first novel that peels back the layers of a haunted Vietnam... Drawing from genres as diverse as horror, humour and historical fiction, Kupersmith creates a rich and dazzling spectacle.' -- Kirkus, starred review 'Creepy, exciting, moving, insanely funny: a sweat-soaked reading delight. Careering through a host of snaking lives, eras, and beautifully drawn locations in Vietnam, Build Your House Around My Body is mesmerising. An absolute triumph of storytelling.' -- Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and the City 'A heady, gothic spellbinder of a book.' -- Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble 'Violet Kupersmith has elevated the ghost story into an art form. Her intricately plotted, flamboyantly original novel is by turns steamy, grisly, comic, horrific, and touching. This literally haunting tale will stay with you long after the last page is turned.' -- Valerie Martin, author of Property and I Give it to You 'A brilliant, sweeping epic that swaps spirits and sheds time like snakeskin, Build Your House Around My Body is a marvel. Thrilling, witty, disturbing, righteous - I won't be able to shut up about how damned awesome this book is. Neither will you.' -- Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts 'This lush, sultry phantasmagoria of a novel is as playful, hypnotic, and bone-chilling as a cobra rising to strike.' -- Elisabeth Thomas, author of Catherine House 'Kupersmith's exceptional debut novel (after the collection The Frangipani Hotel) offers profound and original insight on Vietnam's tortured history... Horrifying and hilarious by turns...marvelously written.' -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) Praise for The Frangipani Hotel: '[A] subversively clever debut collection... These stories - playful, angry, at times legitimately scary - demonstrate a subtlety of purpose that belies [Kupersmith's] youth.' -- New York Times Book Review 'In this auspicious volume, Kupersmith has reshaped and womanhandled traditional Vietnamese folktales that her grandmother told her into a wildly energetic, present-tense fusillade of short stories.' -- Elle

Praise for The Frangipani Hotel: '[A] subversively clever debut collection... These stories - playful, angry, at times legitimately scary - demonstrate a subtlety of purpose that belies [Kupersmith's] youth.' -- New York Times Book Review 'In this auspicious volume, Kupersmith has reshaped and womanhandled traditional Vietnamese folktales that her grandmother told her into a wildly energetic, present-tense fusillade of short stories.' -- Elle

'In this auspicious volume, Kupersmith has reshaped and womanhandled traditional Vietnamese folktales that her grandmother told her into a wildly energetic, present-tense fusillade of short stories.' -- Elle Praise for The Frangipani Hotel: '[A] subversively clever debut collection... These stories - playful, angry, at times legitimately scary - demonstrate a subtlety of purpose that belies [Kupersmith's] youth.' -- New York Times Book Review

Author Information

Violet Kupersmith is the author of the short story collection The Frangipani Hotel. She previously taught English with the Fulbright Program in the Mekong Delta, and was a creative writing fellow at the University of East Anglia. She has lived in Da Lat and Saigon, Vietnam, and currently resides in the U.S.

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