Sofia writing

about • writing • blog • news • recommended reading

writing

Winner: World Fantasy Award
British Fantasy Award
Crawford Award

JEVICK, THE PEPPER MERCHANT'S SON, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick's life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. But just as he revels in Olondria's Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.

In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire's two most powerful cults. Yet even as the country simmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of becoming free by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that seductive necromancy, reading.

Small Beer
Weightless Books
Amazon
Goodreads

“Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria (Small Beer Press) is gloriously vivid and rich.”—Adam Roberts, The Guardian

“Jevick’s journey is an enchanting tale of wonder and superstition, revealing the power of books and the secret traditions of ancient voices. Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“[J]ust about every piece is in place here—it’s the rare first novel with no unnecessary parts—and, in terms of its elegant language, its sharp insights into believable characters, and its almost revelatory focus on the value and meaning of language and story, it’s the most impressive and intelligent first novel I expect to see this year, or perhaps for a while longer.”—Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“Sofia Samatar has an expansive imagination, a poetic and elegant style, and she writes stories so rich, with characters so full of life, they haunt you long after the story ends. A real pleasure.”—Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames

“Mesmerizing—a sustained and dreamy enchantment. A Stranger in Olondria reminds both Samatar’s characters and her readers of the way stories make us long for far-away, even imaginary, places and how they also bring us home again.”—Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club

“Thoroughly engaging and thoroughly original. A story of ghosts and books, treachery and mystery, ingeniously conceived and beautifully written. One of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in recent years.”—Jeffrey Ford, author of The Girl in the Glass

“Gorgeous writing, beautiful and sensual and so precise—a Proustian ghost story.”—Paul Witcover, author of Tumbling After

“Imagine an inlaid cabinet, its drawers within drawers filled with spices, roses, amulets, bright cities, bones, and shadows. Sofia Samatar is a merchant of wonders, and her A Stranger in Olondria is a bookshop of dreams.”—Greer Gilman, author of Cloud & Ashes

“Let the world take note of this dazzling and accomplished fantasy. Sofia Samatar’s debut novel is both exhilarating epic adventure and loving invocation of what it means to live through story, poetry, language. She writes like the heir of Ursula K. Le Guin and Gene Wolfe.”—Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners