Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Historical adventure fiction

LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING

Tiphanie Yanique

A major debut novel from an award-winning writer -- an epic family saga set against the magic and the rhythms of the Virgin Islands.

In the early 1900s an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea, just as the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule.

Orphaned by the sunk vessel are two sisters and their half-brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them.

Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic, set against the emergence of Saint Thomas into the modern world. Wholly unique, with echoes of Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, and the author's own Caribbean family history, the story is told in a language and rhythm that evokes an entire world and way of life and love. Following the Bradshaw family through sixty years of fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, love affairs, curses, magical gifts, loyalties, births, deaths, and triumphs, Land of Love and Drowning is a gorgeous, vibrant debut by an exciting, prize-winning young writer.

Tiphanie Yanique is from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. She is the author of How to Escape from a Leper Colony, and is a 2010 Rona Jaffe Writers Award winner and was named by the National Book Awards as one of 2011's 5 Under 35.

Available products
Book Published 2014-07-10 by Riverhead
Book Published 2014-07-10 by Riverhead

Comments

BookRiot’s“best books we read in April”: “This debut novel is so gorgeously written and such a joy to read that I doled it out to myself in 20-page sips to make the pleasure last as long as possible. What more can I say?! It is challenging in the way that the best books are–Yanique asks readers to explore difficult dynamics and sit with uncomfortable moments–and it makes for an immensely rewarding reading experience. I’m hesitant to say anything that will give away the plot. Come to this book with fresh eyes and an open mind, and be prepared to be dazzled. Read more...

An epic multigenerational tale…Through the voices and lives of its native people, Yanique offers an affecting narrative of the Virgin Islands that pulses with life, vitality, and a haunting evocation of place.

Tiphanie Yanique’s LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING has been longlisted for the prestigious Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction! Read more...

Land of Love and Drowning is a marvel epic and sweeping, yet intimate as a secret. It's a tour de force combining naturalism and lyricism, myth and history. This is a story that feels ancient and modern at the same time. Tiphanie Yanique is a prodigiously talented new writer with a sharp voice, wicked humor, and compassion beyond measure.

What a miracle this book is. Tiphanie Yanique unites the sweep of history and the tenderest movements of the heart in writing so beautiful it's breathtaking. Both an epic and a three-generation love poem, it's irresistible.

Named a Publishers Weekly “Best Summer Books of 2014” & one of “14 to Watch in 2014” by BookPage, the buzz is building for Tiphanie Yanique’s gorgeous, entrancing debut novel LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING. Major magazine coverage for June/July includes O Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire, Elle, and Ebony and a pick for the “5 Must-Reads for Summer” by Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In Land of Love and Drowning, Tiphanie Yanique paints a poignant, electrifying panorama of the Virgin Islands. Breaking writerly rules left and right, Yanique’s sentences seem effortless, free. Yet watch as these assemble into a family saga of unforgettable gravitas. A magnificent story, marvelously told.

Tiphanie Yanique follows up her 2014 Flaherty Dunnan First Novel Prize with another win – the American Academy of Arts and Letters has just announced her the winner of the 2015 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award (awarded ‘to a young writer of considerable literary talent’) for THE LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING!

Incantatory…Yanique sets the family memories in myth and makes them glow.

Bubbling with talent and ambition, this novel is a head-spinning Caribbean cocktail.

How rare to encounter a dauntless and complex novel that convincingly melds true history with magic, but Tiphanie Yanique’s debut—a rich seascape about family and legacy, beauty’s clout and the variable waves of race and class on the twentieth-century Caribbean islands—accomplishes just that.

A few years ago, Tiphanie Yanique wowed us with her phenomenal story collection, How to Escape from a Leper Colony. Now she brings us this astonishing and wondrous novel. Multilayered, multigenerational and epic in both talent and scope, Land of Love and Drowning is a stunning first novel about family, history, home and much, much more. Tiphanie Yanique’s tremendous talents and incredible storytelling will astound you and leave you breathless.

Land of Love and Drowning is a gorgeous incantation of a novel, a masterful fusion of place, language, and seductive storytelling that will hold you spellbound from its first pages to the last. Tiphanie Yanique takes on all of it--the bitter and the sweet, love and loss, betrayal and faith, as well as the distant machinations of state that push us about like so many minnows on ocean tides--and does so with a grace and wisdom that are nothing short of profound. This book is an absolute marvel.