Build Your House Around My Body

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022

Violet Kupersmith

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9780861541003
• Subtopic: Literature General

WINNER OF THE 2023 BARD FICTION PRIZE * SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION’S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE * LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION

'Fantastic' The Sunday Times * 'Beautiful, brilliant, powerful' Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe

Part ghost story, part searing exploration of Vietnam's colonial past, Violet Kupersmith's debut novel is a must read for fans of Cecile Pin, NoViolet Bulawayo or Ruth Ozeki

Two young Vietnamese women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge.

1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father, and is forever changed by the experience.

2011: Twenty-five years later, a young, unhappy Vietnamese-American disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace.

The fates of both women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Violet Kupersmith's heart-pounding fever dream of a novel hurtles through the ghostly secrets of Vietnamese history to create an immersive, playful, utterly unforgettable debut.

'Fiction as daring and accomplished as Violet Kupersmith's first novel reignites my love of the form and its kaleidoscopic possibilities' David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas

Table of contents

• Cover Image
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• JUNE 2010, SAIGON, Nine Months Before Winnie’s Disappearance
• MARCH 2011, SAIGON, The Day Of The Disappearance
• THE HIGHLANDS, Eighteen Years Before The Disappearance
• SAIGON, Seven Months Before The Disappearance
• THE HIGHLANDS, Seven Months Before The Disappearance
• SAIGON, Six Months Before The Disappearance
• SAIGON, The Day After The Disappearance
• THE HIGHLANDS, Nine Years Before The Disappearance
• SAIGON, Five Months Before The Disappearance
• THE HIGHLANDS, Sixty-Nine Years Before The Disappearance
• THE HIGHLANDS, Five Months Before The Disappearance
• SAIGON, Three Months Before The Disappearance
• THE HIGHLANDS, Six Years Before The Disappearance
• THE HIGHLANDS, Sixty-Two Years Before The Disappearance
• THE SOUTHEAST, Two Months Before The Disappearance
• SAIGON, Two Months Before The Disappearance
• THE HIGHLANDS, Thirty Years Before The Disappearance
• SAIGON, The Day After The Disappearance
• THE HIGHLANDS, Two Years Before The Disappearance
• THU DAU MOT, One Week Before The Disappearance
• SAIGON, The Day Before The Disappearance
• SAIGON, Three Days After The Disappearance
• VUNG TAU, Three Years After The Disappearance
• About the Author
• Copyright