Lote
Shola Von Reinhold
(Author)
Description
Solitary Mathilda has long harbored a conflicted enchantment bordering on rapture with the "Bright Young Things," the Bloomsbury Group, and their contemporaries of the '20s and '30s, and throughout her life her attempts at reinvention have mirrored their extravagance and artfulness. After discovering a photograph of the forgotten Black modernist poet Hermia Druitt, who ran in the same circles as the Bright Young Things, Mathilda becomes transfixed and resolves to learn as much as she can about the mysterious figure. Her search brings her to a peculiar artists' residency in Dun, a small European town in which Hermia was known to have lived during the '30s. The artists' residency throws her deeper into a lattice of secrets and secret societies that takes hold of her aesthetic imagination. From champagne theft and Black Modernisms to art sabotage, alchemy, and a lotus-eating proto-luxury communist cult, Mathilda's "Escapes" through modes of aesthetic expression lead her to question the convoluted ways truth is made and obscured.
Product Details
Price
$19.95
$18.55
Publisher
Duke University Press
Publish Date
June 21, 2022
Pages
384
Dimensions
5.5 X 8.4 X 0.9 inches | 0.97 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781478018728
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About the Author
Shola von Reinhold is a writer born and based in Glasgow.
Reviews
"An inspirational, cutting, exquisitely written, multilevel excavation of forgotten Black lives and an Afro-queer celebration of art, aesthetics, literature, and society."--Paul Mendez, author of "Rainbow Milk"
"In choosing to conjure Black voices through historical revisionism, rather than, say, Afrofuturism or pure fiction, the novel produces a new archive--a radical reference tool populated by real and imagined historical figures, Anons who have been festooned, fleshed-out, and freed from the rude imposition of marginality, anonymity and defacement."--Izabella Scott, "White Review"
"LOTE is a rapturous first novel, a queer black fantasy with angels leaping off every page."--Molara Wood "Irish Times"
"Von Reinhold's rich and glorious writing . . . reads as though--to put it in their own description of a room draped in candlelight--everything has been smeared with gold oil. . . . It's more than just the bliss of representation: history here is feeling, not just narrative."--Skye Arundhati Thomas "Frieze Magazine"
"Set amid an artist residency, this arresting debut effortlessly explores infatuation, reinvention, the erasure of black figures from history and gender identities in what marks von Reinhold as a unique new voice in literary fiction."--Layla Haidrani "AnOther Magazine"
"As a celebration of eccentric esprit, LOTE practises what it preaches by being stubbornly its own thing."--Houman Barekat "The Guardian"
"In choosing to conjure Black voices through historical revisionism, rather than, say, Afrofuturism or pure fiction, the novel produces a new archive--a radical reference tool populated by real and imagined historical figures, Anons who have been festooned, fleshed-out, and freed from the rude imposition of marginality, anonymity and defacement."--Izabella Scott, "White Review"
"LOTE is a rapturous first novel, a queer black fantasy with angels leaping off every page."--Molara Wood "Irish Times"
"Von Reinhold's rich and glorious writing . . . reads as though--to put it in their own description of a room draped in candlelight--everything has been smeared with gold oil. . . . It's more than just the bliss of representation: history here is feeling, not just narrative."--Skye Arundhati Thomas "Frieze Magazine"
"Set amid an artist residency, this arresting debut effortlessly explores infatuation, reinvention, the erasure of black figures from history and gender identities in what marks von Reinhold as a unique new voice in literary fiction."--Layla Haidrani "AnOther Magazine"
"As a celebration of eccentric esprit, LOTE practises what it preaches by being stubbornly its own thing."--Houman Barekat "The Guardian"
