They said I've done something wrong?... And they've just left me down here to starve. Haven't had a drop in days more so...

Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of his name or situation or orientation he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Now, McGlue wants one thing and one thing only: a drink. Because for McGlue, insufferable, terrifying memories accompany sobriety. A-sail on the high seas of literary tradition, Ottessa Moshfegh gives us an unforgettable blackguard on a knife-sharp voyage through the fogs of recollection.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from Boston. Her novelEileenwas awarded the 2016 Pen/Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her short fiction has earned her theParis ReviewPlimpton Prize, a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and an O. Henry Award. Her collectionHomesick for Another Worldwas published in January 2017.McGluewas her debut novel, and the winner of the Fence Modern Prize for Prose and the Believer Book Award. This is the first time the book is published here in the U.K.