Description

In a near-future pastoral world, a forty-nine-year-old livestock veterinarian looks back on a “headstrong summer” when his obsession with a fourteen-year-old girl—his so-called “chosen one”—began to blur the line between devotion and control. As the girl dreams of escape from her village and the weight of her father’s authority, the narrator’s language turns increasingly tender, then increasingly coercive, revealing how a rescuer can become a predator. Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s novel is a ferociously unsettling study of grooming, power, and self-justification, where desire is narrated with lyrical intensity even as it exposes its own violence. With its pages-long, swelling sentences and morally charged intimacy, the book interrogates faith, fate, and the stories people tell to make harm feel inevitable.

Available Editions

paperback edition cover

paperback

Graywolf Press

Published Jan 1, 2024

298 pages

ISBN: 9781644452745

available

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Details

First Published

2023

Language

eng

Translation

From: nld

Content Warnings

Content and trigger warnings for My Heavenly Favorite by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld.

Suicide/Self-Harm
Sexual Violence
Abuse
Death/Grief
War/Trauma