Woman, Eating: 'Absolutely brilliant - Kohda takes the vampire trope and makes it her own' Ruth Ozeki

In Claire Kohda's novel "The Blood of Flowers," a young vampire struggles to find fresh blood in London, while dealing with her mixed ethnic heritage, relationship with food, and conflicts between her demon and human sides. The book is a witty and thought-provoking take on the vampire trope, and has been praised by critics for its unusual and original approach.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 24 March 2022
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Absolutely brilliant - tragic, funny, eccentric . . . Claire Kohda takes the vampire trope and makes it her own.

RUTH OZEKI
A BOOK OF 2022 IN HARPER'S BAZAAR, THE NEW YORKER, DAILY MAIL, GLAMOUR, BBC, HUFFPOST, and GAL-DEM

Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But Lydia can't eat any of this. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pig's blood in London - where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time - is much more difficult than she'd anticipated.

Then there are the humans: the people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men who follow her after dark, and Ben, a goofy-grinned artist she is developing feelings for. Lydia knows that they are her natural prey, but she can't bring herself to feed on them.

If Lydia is to find a way to exist in the world, she must reconcile the conflicts within her - between her demon and human sides, her mixed ethnic heritage, and her relationship with food, and, in turn, humans.

Before any of this, however, she must eat.

Witty and thought-provoking

Stylist

Blistering

Glamour

Unusual, original, and strikingly contemporary

Guardian

Deliciously fresh

Waterstones

A wholly 21st-century take on bloodsucking

Observer

Fascinating

BookRiot

Pumps fresh blood into the horror genre

The Times

Weight: 374g
Dimension: 144 x 223 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780349015613