LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022
'In its stretch and imaginative depth, Booth has an utterly seductive authority'
Guardian
Sunday Times Book of the Month
SIX BROTHERS AND SISTERS. ONE INJUSTICE THAT WILL SHATTER THEIR BOND FOREVER
From the million-copy bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic novel about the infamous, ill-fated Booth family.
Junius is the patriarch, a celebrated Shakespearean actor who fled bigamy charges in England, both a mesmerising talent and a man of terrifying instability. As his children grow up in a remote farmstead in 1830s rural Baltimore, the country draws ever closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.
Of the six Booth siblings who survive to adulthood, each has their own dreams they must fight to realise - but it is Johnny who makes the terrible decision that will change the course of history - the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Booth is a riveting novel focused on the very things that bind, and break, a family.
Read More'Booth is a triumph! No one writes like Karen Joy Fowler. With wit, heart, and revelatory insight, she teases ghosts from their shadows, transforming the way we see the past, shedding new light on our troubled present. ''Accomplished, immersive, and profoundly satisfying. BOOTH is both highly relevant to modern life and a fully realised piece of fiction. I loved learning about the Booth family and all their eccentricities, set against the backdrop of Americanhistory. I can't praise it highly enough, what a range Karen Joy Fowler has. ''Booth is a subtly devastating meditation on how the USA arrived at this troubled point in its present history by looking at a midnineteenth-century family. Its world - dense, granular, intricate - is created with immense care and precision ... This is her finest, most beautiful novel to date.