Gone to the Forest

The death-throes of a colonial world captured in dark, obsessive prose, punctuated by images of strange, surreal beauty. One thinks at times of both Coetzee and Gordimer, but Kitamura is very much her own writer -- Salman Rushdie
Beautifully observed ... the cumulative effect of this shocking, desperate book is something that approaches magnificent * FT *
Kitamura is in complete control, both of the prose and of the story it carries. She is a skilled hunter and we are her helpless prey -- Teju Cole * Open City *
A stark, urgent, beautiful novel. The characters and images continue to haunt me, a tribute to their lasting emotional power and their creator's extraordinary gifts -- Siri Hustvedt, author of 'The Summer Without Men'
A ruthless, controlled style distinguishes this novel ... [Kitamura's] style reminds one of Marguerite Duras and Herta Müller - power is the subject, and the execution is precise * The Daily Beast *
A mesmerizing novel, one whose force builds inexorably as its story unfolds in daring, unexpected strokes. Kitamura's prose brings to mind Cormac McCarthy or Jean Rhys, but the music of these lines is all her own - lyrical, sharp-edged, spare, and unafraid. Be warned: you'll find yourself reading long past midnight, out of breath and wide awake. This is a bold and powerful book. -- Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge
I have been in a daze ever since I finished this book. Gone to the Forest is superb. It is so beautifully written, so balanced - there isn't a spare sentence or word in the whole thing ... Utterly distinctive. Kitamura is one of the best living writers I've read, and she gives the dead ones a run for their money. -- Evie Wyld, author of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice
Hemingway's returned to life - and this time, he's a woman -- Tom McCarthy, author of C, Remainder and Men in Space
A relentless fever dream, each perfectly pared paragraph urging you on to the next -- Ed Park, author of Personal Days
There is nothing better on earth, fictive or not, than What Goes Wrong on the Plantation, and in Gone to the Forest it goes totally and splendidly wrong. -- Padgett Powell
Evokes a Conradian Heart of Darkness portentousness . . . flashes of unexpected beauty . . . Like the intricate ingenuity of the floating farm flush with the golden fish, Gone to the Forest, in just 200 pages, floats, unfolds and astonishes. -- Marie Myung-Ok Lee * San Francisco Chronicle *
In a restrained voice Ms. Kitamura offers echoes of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, coolly chronicling the family's undoing as it tracks against the political turmoil ripping through the nation. -- Susannah Meadows * New York Times *
Gone to the Forest is Katie Kitamura's second novel, about a family and the cost of European colonization in an unknown time and place... that recalls, at first and most often, J.M. Coetzee's South Africa. Kitamura writes with fine tension and clipped grace. Her observations are subtle and sharp. The volcano's importance in the story evokes Aime Cesaire's poem Corps Perdu, which begins, "Moi, qui Krakatoa . . ." and is a soaring command, in the wake of decolonization, for "the islands to be." [She is a] rising literary star. -- Samantha Kuok Leese * Spectator *
Striking . . . Beautifully written . . . Kitamura's carefully wrought characters are captivating. * Hyphen Magazine *
In this wondrous tale of both a family and a country's dissolution, Kitamura brings readers into an unspecified time in an unnamed colonial country . . . Kitamura, with spare, mesmerizing prose, paints a memorable vision of emotional chaos echoed by geologic and political turmoil. [Starred review] * Publishers Weekly *
Kitamura's words are tough, and her characters are tied to the tails of wounded beasts: mother countries, the land itself, and hierarchies both out of steam and out of date . . . Kitamura makes the end of history - many histories - seem both casual and immediate. -- Sasha Frere-Jones * NewYorker.com *
A rising literary star ... Gone to the Forest is darkly seductive' -- Aimee Farrell * Vogue *
Rendered in a stripped-back eerily simple prose... reads like Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy... It's horrible and beautiful and pretty much a class act all round -- Stuart Hammond * Dazed and Confused *
Redolent of J.M. Coetzee and Joseph Conrad, this is not a novel that lets you go easily, even after you reach the end. -- Hephzibah Anderson * Daily Mail *
Beautifully written, with the pace of a thriller, this is a dark, twisted gem -- Delphine Chui * Easy Living *
Haunting and hypnotic... stunningly wrought... an intelligent, unforgettable novel * Psychologies *
There is much to admire in this ambitious piece of fiction -- Sarah Hall * Guardian *
A stunningly dark story -- Lena de Casparis * Company *
Wonderfully evocative... by the end I was hooked and harrowed in equal measure. Gone to the Forest starts off very quietly but delivers a cracking great wallop at the end. -- Simon Savidge * We Love this Book *
Thirty-three-year-old Katie Kitamura writes about raging, ageing men better than most raging, ageing men do themselves... Gone to the Forest is bold for many reasons: not only for the cultural, sexual, historical and national boundaries that Kitamura steps over to get into the minds of her characters. But also for the way she explores the cruelty of colonisation - whether it's of homelands, or of women's bodies - within a hauntingly beautiful, startlingly brief story of an old man dying. -- Chris Cox * Observer *
Written in stripped-down prose, the whole has a mythic resonance that leaves a deep impression in the mind... in Gone to the Forest: as the rebels rise and a volcano explodes, Kitamura is dedicated to giving us a thrilling snapshot of tensions boiling over, and of "the world, falling to pieces". -- Philip Womack * Daily Telegraph *
A pressure cooker of a book ... An allegorical novel of almost unnerving starkness -- Alastair Mabbott * Glasgow Herald *
A novel of Steinbeckian characters living in a land of Biblical harshness described with a contemporary fast-and-looseness at a dizzying pace ... Otherworldly ... Strange, seductive, transporting. * Monocle *
When a nearby volcano erupts, so do filial, sexual and political tensions, which Kitamura relates in cool, clipped reportage. The minimal context is frustratingly claustrophobic, but the effect is mesmerising. We discover a fable-like tale, restricted in relevance to no specific history or peoples, that condemns neither colonisers nor the colonised but rather those who fail to attempt understanding. This is sparse, dark, elegant prose that startles with its subtlety and sharp insight. -- Kathleen Harris * Irish Times *