WINNER OF THE 2023 BARD FICTION PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION’S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION
Part ghost story, part searing exploration of Vietnam’s colonial past, Violet Kupersmith’s debut novel is a must read for fans of Cecile Pin, NoViolet Bulowayo or Ruth Ozeki
Two young Vietnamese women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge.
1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father, and is forever changed by the experience.
2011: Twenty-five years later, a young, unhappy Vietnamese-American disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace.
The fates of both women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Violet Kupersmith’s heart-pounding fever dream of a novel hurtles through the ghostly secrets of Vietnamese history to create an immersive, playful, utterly unforgettable debut.
‘Fiction as daring and accomplished as Violet Kupersmith’s first novel reignites my love of the form and its kaleidoscopic possibilities’ David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas
Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
Violet Kupersmith is the author of the short story collection The Frangipani Hotel. She previously taught English with the Fulbright programme in the Mekong Delta, and was a creative writing fellow at the University of East Anglia. She has lived in Da Lat and Saigon, and is currently based in the United States. Her first novel, Build Your House Around My Body, was a Finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize in 2021.