Delphi

A Guardian Best Book of 2022 * "Clever and surprising." --BuzzFeed * "Brilliantly funny." --San Francisco Chronicle * "Ingenious."--The Millions * "Powerful." --Harper's Bazaar

A captivating debut novel about a classics professor immersed in research for a new book on a prophecy in the ancient world who confronts chilling questions about her own life just as the pandemic descends--for readers of Jenny Offill, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Sally Rooney.

Covid-19 has arrived in London, and the entire world quickly succumbs to the surreal, chaotic mundanity of screens, isolation, and the disasters big and small that have plagued recent history. As our unnamed narrator--a classics professor immersed in her studies of ancient prophecies--navigates the tightening grip of lockdown, a marriage in crisis, and a ten-year-old son who seems increasingly unreachable, she becomes obsessed with predicting the future. Shifting her focus from chiromancy (prophecy by palm reading) to zoomancy (prophecy by animal behavior) to oenomancy (prophecy by wine), she fails to notice the future creeping into the heart of her very own home, and when she finally does, the threat has already breached the gates.

Brainy and ominous, imaginative and funny, Delphi is a snapshot and a time capsule--it vividly captures our current moment and places our reality in the context of myth. Clare Pollard has delivered one of our first great pandemic novels, a mesmerizing and richly layered story about how we keep on living in a world that is ever-more uncertain and absurd.

Author: Clare Pollard
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 08/02/2022
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.66lbs
Size: 8.33h x 5.71w x 0.81d
ISBN: 9781982197896


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 03/01/2022 pg. 7
Kirkus Reviews 06/01/2022
Library Journal 07/01/2022 pg. 63
Booklist 07/01/2022 pg. 13
Publishers Weekly 08/15/2022

About the Author
Pollard, Clare: - Clare Pollard lives with husband and two children in London. At nineteen, she published her first book of poetry, The Heavy Petting Zoo. After studying English literature at Cambridge, she has since made a living in literature--teaching, translating, judging, reviewing--though sometimes supporting it with bar-work or ushering. She has published four collections of poetry--the most recent, Incarnation, about motherhood. Her play The Weather, performed at the Royal Court, was the first British play about climate change. Influenced by the classics, Clare translated Ovid's Heroines--a series of dramatic monologues in the voices of women from Greek and Roman myth--which she toured as a one-woman show in the UK. She currently edits the journal Modern Poetry in Translation, which was cofounded by Ted Hughes. Delphi is her first novel.