Assassin of Reality

"A tense, gripping, and satisfying story that will leave readers wondering about their own physical limits and what would be possible, if only one had the proper motivation. Translated from the original Russian, this dark and unforgiving magical world treats its characters in ways that make Harry Potter and even Naomi Novik's Scholomance Trilogy look like preschool." — Booklist (starred review) "This is a novel that transcends genre and will astound readers looking for serious, contemporary fiction." — Library Journal (starred review) “Vita Nostra—a cross between Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian [...] is the anti-Harry Potter you didn’t know you wanted.”  — Washington Post "Vita Nostra is singular and brilliant - unlike anything I’ve ever read." — R.F. Kuang, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel “Vita Nostra has become a powerful influence on my own writing. It’s a book that has the potential to become a modern classic of its genre, and I couldn’t be more excited to see it get the global audience in English it so richly deserves.”  — Lev Grossman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians “Vita Nostra takes the trope of young people selected for a school for magic and transforms it into an unnerving, deeply philosophical coming-of-age tale. [...] Hersey’s translation is plain and straightforward, a wise choice that enhances the deep strangeness of this trippy, vivid novel.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “This dark, ambitious, and intellectually strenuous novel will feel like a fresh revelation to fantasy readers glutted with Western wish-fulfillment narratives.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on Vita Nostra “Imagine that Hogwarts has opened a satellite campus inside Harry Haller’s Magic Theater from Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, and assigned Kafka, Dostoevsky and Rod Serling to oversee the curriculum.” — BookPage on Vita Nostra