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The New York Times bestselling author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands returns with a spellbinding novel that represents her most exciting leap yet. In Lapvona, a motherless shepherd boy in a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test.

Marek never knew his mother and shares an enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who has an ability to communicate with the natural world. Her gift brings her the transmission of sacred knowledge on levels far beyond those available to other villagers and, for some, Ina’s home in the woods outside of the village is a place to fear and avoid. One of those is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the depraved governor, Villiam. The people’s desperate need to believe that the powers that be have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by Villiam and the priest in a year of record drought and famine. When fate brings Marek in proximity to Villiam’s family, new and occult forces upset the old order and by year’s end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, and the natural world and the spirit world will prove to be very thin indeed.

Moshfegh is also the author of the Booker Prize shortlisted novel Eileen, the novella McGlue, and the short story collection Homesick for Another World. In conversation with Barrie Hardymon, the Senior Editor at NPR’s Weekend Edition and the lead editor for books.