Paradise Rot

Jenny Hval, Marjam Idriss

A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery
Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo’s sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.

This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.

status checked out
genre Literature and Fiction » Magical Realism
publisher Verso
publish date 2018
popularity checked out 2 time(s)

Reviews

  • By Kyle Venooker -

    Paradise Rot is a strange, moving novel as amorphous and shifting as the foggy city of Aybourne in which it is set. Djaoanna (Jo for short) is a Norwegian student who finds herself in a city similar to the world we find ourselves in — though with differences just slight enough to be thoroughly unsettling. A strange, handmade poster lands Jo in an abandoned brewery with Pym and Carral, and the ensuing relationship which burgeons between them explores just what happens when one partakes of the apple which has been expressly forbidden. Themes of Eden, the corruption of the flesh, and the sweet, stinky savor of rot pervades the senses as the walls between Jo and Carral, Jo and Pym, Pym and Carral, and the reader and all of them slowly, subtly lose definition amidst a veil of soft, downy fungus. Paradise Rot gets inside you, slowly, and eats its way to your very core.

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