The Old Fire

'A touching, mysterious novel, imbued with the beauty and strangeness of a fairy tale.' Ayşegül Savaş

In the wake of her father's death, Agathe leaves New York and returns to her childhood home in the French countryside, after fifteen years away. Agathe and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all that time apart. Now, they must empty their home before it is knocked down. Véra stopped speaking when she was six, and as the pair clean and sift through a lifetime's worth of belongings, old memories and resentments surface.

Tender, melancholic and evocative, The Old Fire is Elisa Shua Dusapin's most personal and moving novel yet. An exploration of time and memory, of family and belonging, of the unsaid and the unanswered, it is also a graceful and profound exploration of how loss and grief can live alongside life and abundance.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"I began this book late at night, intending to read one chapter, and emerged from its powerful enchantment a few hours later, having accidentally reached the end. A bewitching meditation on tenderness and violence, intimacy and estrangement, The Old Fire will transport you to an ancient and wild place, immersing you in its temperatures and rainfalls, its grief and grace and sound and silence. You won't be the same when you leave it. A breathtaking achievement from one of my favorite living writers." - Tess Gunty

"The Old Fire traces the silences within a family, alongside the muscle memory of childhood intimacy and our attempts to break through loneliness when words fail us. Elisa Shua Dusapin observes her characters with anthropological curiosity and great sensitivity. Her wisdom will astound you." - Sanaë Lemoine

"A touching, mysterious novel, imbued with the beauty and strangeness of a fairy tale." - Ayşegül Savaş