KWC faculty member Téa Obreht’s new book Inland, arrived this week to tremendous acclaim from seemingly everyone, including none other than President Obama. He wrote on his Facebook page, “Inland by Téa Obreht just came out yesterday, so I won’t spoil anything. But those of you who’ve been waiting for Obreht’s next novel won’t be disappointed.”
The Washington Post writes:
It wasn’t just that she was only 25.
Or that she was writing in a second language.
The real miracle was the book itself.
When Téa Obreht’s debut novel, “The Tiger’s Wife,” appeared in 2011, we ran out of superlatives. The story’s macabre humor reminded me of Isaac Bashevis Singer. In her magical realism, others heard echoes of Gabriel García Márquez. All agreed that her complex tale of life and loss and remembrance in the Balkans marked the arrival of an extraordinary writer. Now, eight years later, Obreht’s second novel, “Inland,” has arrived…[It’s] a magical Western you’ll want to savor with a tall glass of water.
In a lengthy interview, in which they note that Téa threw away 1400 pages in the process of creating Inland, Time magazine writes: “Not since Zadie Smith has a young writer arrived with such power and grace.”
Kirkus says: Eight years after Obreht’s sensational debut, The Tiger’s Wife (2011), she returns with a novel saturated in enough realism and magic to make the ghost of Gabriel García Márquez grin. She keeps her penchant for animals and the dead but switches up centuries and continents. Having won an Orange Prize for The Tiger’s Wife, a mesmerizing 20th-century Balkan folktale, Obreht cuts her new story from a mythmaking swatch of the Arizona Territory in 1893.
Téa will speak about both her books and her writing process in several sessions at the conference. We will be proud to welcome her to Kauai in November. The Tiger’s Wife and Inland are both available on Amazon, or you can pick up copies at our little bookstore at the conference.
