An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth

Description

An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth
by Anna Moschovakis

ISBN: 9781593767839
Softcover, new

Brief Description:
A formidable, uncanny, and utterly unique new work from accomplished
novelist and poet, Anna Moschovakis, whose translation of David Diop’s
Frêre d’âme (At Night All Blood Is Black, Pushkin and FSG) won the 2021
International Booker Prize After a seismic event leaves the world
shattered, an unnamed narrator at the end of a mediocre acting career
struggles to regain the ability to walk on ground that is in constant
motion. When her alluring younger housemate, Tala, disappears, what had
begun as an obsession grows into an impulse to kill, forcing the narrator
to confront the meaning of the ruptures that have suddenly upended her
life. The drive to find and eliminate Tala becomes an existential pursuit,
leading back in time and out into a desolate, dust-covered city, where the
narrator is targeted by charismatic “healing” ideologues with uncertain
motives. Torn between a gnawing desire to reckon with the forces that have
made her and an immediate need to find the stability to survive, she is
forced to question familiar figurations of light, shadow, authenticity,
resistance, and the limits of personal transformation in an alienated,
alienating world. Darkly comic, deeply resonant, and hallucinatory in tone,
An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth will appeal to
readers of Annie Ernaux, Dionne Brand, and Sheila Heti.