Matrix

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2022 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021 Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times,The Washington PostTIMENPRThe Financial TimesGood HousekeepingEsquireVultureMarie ClaireVoxThe Los Angeles TimesUSA Today and more! ΓÇ£A relentless exhibition of GroffΓÇÖs freakish talent. In just over 250 pagesshe gives us a character study to rival Hilary MantelΓÇÖs Thomas Cromwell .ΓÇ¥ ΓÇô USA Today ΓÇ£An electric reimagining . . . feministsensual . . . unforgettable.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇô OThe Oprah Magazine ΓÇ£Thrilling and heartbreaking.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇôTime Magazine ΓÇ£[A] page-by-page pleasure as we soar with her.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇôNew York Times One of our best American writersand author of the highly anticipated THE VASTER WILDSLauren Groff returns with this exhilarating and groundbreaking novel Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitainedeemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly lifeseventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbeyits nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new lifeMarie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucibleMarie steadily supplants her desire for familyfor her homelandfor the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sistersand a conviction in her own divine visions. Marieborn the last in a long line of women warriors and crusadersis determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening waysone that can never reconcile itself with her existencewill the sheer force of MarieΓÇÖs vision be bulwark enough? Equally alive to the sacred and the profaneMatrix gathers currents of violencesensualityand religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passionaberrant faithand a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren GroffΓÇÖs new novelher first since Fates and Furiesis a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.