The Lacuna

The Women's Prize-winning novel, The Lacuna, from Barbara Kingsolver, the global bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible.

Tells the heartbreaking story of a man torn between the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s America in the shadow of Senator McCarthy.

FROM THE WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
TWICE WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

'Lush.' Sunday Times
'Superb.' Daily Mail
'Elegantly written.' Sunday Telegraph

From award-winning and internationally bestselling author of Demon Copperhead and Flight Behaviour, The Lacuna is the heartbreaking story of a man torn between the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s America in the shadow of Senator McCarthy.

Born in America and raised in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. When he starts work in the household of Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo - where the Bolshevik leader, Lev Trotsky, is also being harboured as a political exile - he inadvertently casts his lot with art, communism and revolution. A compulsive diarist, he records and relates his colourful experiences of life with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Trotsky in the midst of the Mexican revolution. A violent upheaval sends him back to America; but political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach - the lacuna - between truth and public presumption.