Lidia Yuknavitch - The Book of Joan

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“Riveting, ravishing, and crazy deep, The Book of Joan is as ferociously intelligent as it is heart-wrenchingly humane, as generous as it is relentless, as irresistible as it is important. In other words, it’s classic Lidia Yuknavitch: genius.”

“Lidia Yuknavitch is a writer who, with each ever more triumphant book, creates a new language with which she writes the audacious stories only she can tell. The Book of Joan is a raucous celebration, a searing condemnation, and fiercely imaginative retelling of Joan of Arc’s transcendent life.”

“Dazzling. A post-apocalyptic literary tour de force, The Book of Joan begs for buzz. There is so much here that is transgressive and badass and nervy and transformational. Here is a Katniss Everdeen for grown-ups.”

“It’s unfair to compare Yuknavitch to only female authors. With her verve and bold imagination, she’s earned the throne left empty since the death of David Foster Wallace.”

“Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan inscribes whatever blank canvases it finds—space, skin, alabaster hallways, holding cells called Liberty Rooms—to tell the story of the vital and violent Joan. As with Dora, the price for entry into Yuknavitch’s world is corporeal. Her narrators demand we shed all fear of the body and step into a new literary nakedness. The Book of Joan is graffiti in white ink. It is where experimentalism meets the dirty earth and gets saved.”

“Lidia Yuknavitch’s new book has left me throttled and close to speechless. Speculative doesn’t begin to describe this sexy, imaginative, and thoroughly original work. Atwood, Le Guin, and Lessing come to mind, but Yuknavitch’s sensibility, which includes her casual ability to completely blow your mind, is all her own.”

“Reading The Book of Joan is a meditation on art and sex and war. My brain is full-bloomed. Get ready: it’s glorious.”

The Small Backs of Children

Dora: A Headcase

The Chronology of Water

Her Other Mouths

Liberty’s Excess

Real to Reel

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Narrative sampling of the following texts appear in The Book of Joan :

St. Joan of Arc , by Vita Sackville-West, Grove Press, 2001

The Book of the City of Ladies , by Christine de Pizan, trans. by Earl Jeffrey Richards, Persea, 1998

Hamlet , by William Shakespeare

“Romance of the Rose,” by Jean de Meun

The poem “Wound” is written by Brigid Yuknavitch

THE BOOK OF JOAN. Copyright © 2017 by Lidia Yuknavitch. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

FIRST EDITION

Cover design by Joanne O’Neill

Cover photograph © Whit Richardson / Getty Images

Cover images © Choreograph / Getty Images (lettering)

Title page photograph by Lucopoco/Shutterstock, Inc.

Digital Edition APRIL 2017 ISBN: 9780062383297

Print ISBN: 978-0-06238327-3

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