Ottessa Moshfegh's "Lapvona"
Author Ottessa Moshfegh returns to speak to Kate Wolf about her latest novel Lapvona. The book is set in a medieval village of the same name; a place beset by violence and extreme cruelty. Its ruler is the loutish overlord Villiam, who engineers massacres of Lapvona’s inhabitants whenever dissent grows and steals their water during a deadly drought. Villiam’s distant relative is Jude, a shepherd who beats his son Marek and lies about the fate of Marek’s supposedly deceased mother. Marek weathers his father’s abuse through a devotion to God and the soothing of the village wet nurse, Ina, but his piety doesn’t keep him from his own brutal acts. In a fatal twist, he ends up in the care of Villiam, on the hill above the suffering villagers, increasingly complicit in Lapvona’s corruption, which is as germane today as a thousand years ago.
Also, Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or, returns to recommend The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvili.
