Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking: A John Murray Original

Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is a novel about a young woman coming of age in a town reckoning with its brutal past, written with a poetry as defamiliarising as it is rich. It is a kaleidoscopic and beguiling debut that shows what happens when objective truth and meaning are drowned in the shifting river of history and politics.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 20 June 2024
Publisher: John Murray Press

A kaleidoscopic and beguiling debut novel, "Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking" by Andrew McMillan, offers a unique and captivating exploration of the intersection of objective truth and meaning in the shifting river of history and politics. The novel has received widespread acclaim, with critics praising its hopeful glitter, defamiliarising poetry, and insightful portrayal of the human condition. Set in a town grappling with its brutal past, the story follows a young woman named the almost daughter as she navigates the complexities of her identity and the world around her. The almost daughter is almost normal, knowing how to know and not know, but she also knows about ghosts and their ghosts. She focuses on being a woman, training her body and dreaming of escape, until she meets Oksana, who is not even almost normal and has questions that are not normal at all. The novel is a powerful exploration of the human condition, offering a fresh and thought-provoking perspective on the relationship between truth and meaning in a world that is constantly changing. With its rich language and defamiliarising poetry, "Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking" is a novel that will stay with readers long after they finish reading it.

Weight: 336g
Dimension: 136 x 216 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781399814256