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“Mesmerizing . . . [Téa] Obreht’s striking ability to explainthe world through stories is matched by her patience with the partsof life—and death—that endlessly confound us.”
—
The BosTon GloBe
“Makes for a thrilling beginning to what will certainlybe a great literary career.”
—
elle
“A compelling, persuasive writer, Obreht brings improbableelements to life on the page. Better, she makes them snap togetherwith such magical skill that even the skeptical reader believes.”
—
ChiCaGo sun-Times
“In Obreht’s expert hands, the novel’s mythology,while rooted in a foreign world, comes to be somehow familiar,like the dark fairy tales of our own youth, the kindthat spooked us into reading them again and again.”
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o: The oprah maGazine
“Obreht writes with an angel’s pen . . . creating a skein of descriptivepassages ush with apt details and ringing with lyrical dictionabout city life, country life, private dreams and public difculties.”
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npr’s all ThinGs Considered
“Gorgeous . . . one of the mostextraordinary debut novels in recent memory.”
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VoGue
“Every word, every scene, every thought is blazingly alivein this many-faceted, spellbinding,and rending novel of death, succor, and remembrance.”
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BooklisT (sTarred reView)
“A spectacular accomplishment . . . written in a wry,classical, luxuriant style reminiscent of Tolstoy.”
—
marie Claire
Winner of
THE ORANGE PRIZE
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
finalist Winner of
THE ORANGE PRIZE
the forty days of the soul begin on the morning
after death. That first night, before its forty days begin, the soullies still against sweated-on pillows and watches the living foldthe hands and close the eyes, choke the room with smoke and si-lence to keep the new soul from the doors and the windows andthe cracks in the floor so that it does not run out of the house likea river. The living know that, at daybreak, the soul will leavethem and make its way to the places of its past—the schools anddormitories of its youth, army barracks and tenements, housesrazed to the ground and rebuilt, places that recall love and guilt,difficulties and unbridled happiness, optimism and ecstasy, mem-ories of grace meaningless to anyone else—and sometimes this journey will carry it so far for so long that it will forget to comeback. For this reason, the living bring their own rituals to a stand-still: to welcome the newly loosed spirit, the living will not clean,will not wash or tidy, will not remove the soul’s belongings forforty days, hoping that sentiment and longing will bring it homeagain, encourage it to return with a message, with a sign, or withforgiveness.If it is properly enticed, the soul will return as the days go by,to rummage through drawers, peer inside cupboards, seek thetactile comfort of its living identity by reassessing the dish rack
1
THE COAST
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