Présentation de l'éditeur
Set on a struggling farm in a fiercely beautiful colonial country teetering on the brink of civil war, this second novel by one of international literature's rising young stars weaves a brilliant tale of family drama and political turmoil. Since his mother's death ten years earlier, Tom and his father have fashioned a strained peace on their family farm. Everything is frozen under the old man's vicious, relentless control - even, Tom soon discovers, his own future. When a young woman named Carine enters their lives, the complex triangle of intrigue and affection escalates the tension between the two men to breaking point. After a catastrophic volcanic eruption ignites the nation's smoldering discontent into open revolution, Tom, his father and Carine find themselves questioning their loyalties to one another and their determination to salvage their way of life.
Revue de presse
The death-throes of a colonial world captured in dark, obsessive prose, punctuated by images of strange, surreal beauty. One thinks at times of both Coetzee and Gordimer, but Kitamura is very much her own writer -- Salman Rushdie
Beautifully observed ... the cumulative effect of this shocking, desperate book is something that approaches magnificent ―
FT Published On: 2013-02-16
Kitamura is in complete control, both of the prose and of the story it carries. She is a skilled hunter and we are her helpless prey -- Teju Cole ―
Open City
A stark, urgent, beautiful novel. The characters and images continue to haunt me, a tribute to their lasting emotional power and their creator's extraordinary gifts -- Siri Hustvedt, author of 'The Summer Without Men'
A ruthless, controlled style distinguishes this novel ... [Kitamura's] style reminds one of Marguerite Duras and Herta Müller - power is the subject, and the execution is precise ―
The Daily Beast
A mesmerizing novel, one whose force builds inexorably as its story unfolds in daring, unexpected strokes. Kitamura's prose brings to mind Cormac McCarthy or Jean Rhys, but the music of these lines is all her own - lyrical, sharp-edged, spare, and unafraid. Be warned: you'll find yourself reading long past midnight, out of breath and wide awake. This is a bold and powerful book. -- Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge
I have been in a daze ever since I finished this book.
Gone to the Forest is superb. It is so beautifully written, so balanced - there isn't a spare sentence or word in the whole thing ... Utterly distinctive. Kitamura is one of the best living writers I've read, and she gives the dead ones a run for their money. -- Evie Wyld, author of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice
Hemingway's returned to life - and this time, he's a woman -- Tom McCarthy, author of C, Remainder and Men in Space
A relentless fever dream, each perfectly pared paragraph urging you on to the next -- Ed Park, author of Personal Days
There is nothing better on earth, fictive or not, than What Goes Wrong on the Plantation, and in
Gone to the Forest it goes totally and splendidly wrong. -- Padgett Powell Published On: 2012-06-11
Evokes a Conradian
Heart of Darkness portentousness . . . flashes of unexpected beauty . . . Like the intricate ingenuity of the floating farm flush with the golden fish,
Gone to the Forest, in just 200 pages, floats, unfolds and astonishes. -- Marie Myung-Ok Lee ―
San Francisco Chronicle Published On: 2012-08-07
In a restrained voice Ms. Kitamura offers echoes of J. M. Coetzee's
Disgrace, coolly chronicling the family's undoing as it tracks against the political turmoil ripping through the nation. -- Susannah Meadows ―
New York Times Published On: 2012-08-29
Gone to the Forest is Katie Kitamura's second novel, about a family and the cost of European colonization in an unknown time and place... that recalls, at first and most often, J.M. Coetzee's South Africa. Kitamura writes with fine tension and clipped grace. Her observations are subtle and sharp. The volc
