Book Nook - The Devil's Grip: A Novel

 

Wickedly dark with a mystical edge, The Devil's Grip: A Novel (Other Press Trade Paperback Original; On Sale: 4/2/24) offers a story of a love affair gone bad capturing the pull of toxic relationships.” Set against the romantic backdrop of Florence, this story unravels a haunting Italian love affair gone awry. A woman, lured by the city’s charm, finds an unexpected and consuming love amidst the Renaissance architecture. Her unconventional partner, with his dark, ugly looks, becomes her magnetic counterpart, their bond seemingly instantaneously inseparable. Ignoring any concerning signs, they think they can fix each other. She feels bound to him, body and soul.  Yet, beneath the façade of passion sits a web of lies and infidelity, driving both into a down spiral of paranoia and mutual deception. Their connection, warped by codependency, takes on a darker, inexplicable quality, leading her to believe that there’s a demon inside him, and inside her too.   Attempting to break free, she flees to New Orleans behind another man. But the haunting pull of the past lingers, and their shared demons are just below the surface. The Devil's Grip is a bewitching narrative that delves into the disturbing intricacies of abusive relationships, crafting a storyline both unsettling and darkly humorous. This enthralling new novel touches on the difficulty in freeing oneself from toxicity, through the unhinged twists of one woman’s story. ​​

About the Author: Lina Wolff was born in Lund, Sweden, and lived for several years in Spain and Italy, where she worked as a translator. She arrived on the literary stage in 2009 with the publication of Many People Die Like You, a collection of short stories set in Spain and in the south of Sweden. In 2012 her debut novel, Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs, won the Vi Magazine Literature Prize. Her second novel, The Polyglot Lovers, won Sweden’s highest literary award, the August Prize for Fiction, in 2016, and has been translated into seventeen languages. Carnality (Other Press, 2022) was awarded the prestigious Aftonbladet Literature Prize in 2019.  About the Translator: Saskia Vogel is from Los Angeles and lives in Berlin, where she works as a writer and Swedish-to-English literary translator. Her 2019 debut novel, Permission, has been translated into four languages. She has written on themes of gender, power and the art of translation for publications such as Granta, The White Review, The Offing, and The Paris Review Daily. Her translations include works by Lina Wolff, Katrine Marçal, Karolina Ramqvist, Johannes Anyuru and the modernist eroticist Rut Hillarp.