A New York Times bestseller and the basis of the acclaimed HBO Series starring Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smolett & Michael K. Williams
“Ruff has great fun pitting mid-twentieth-century horror and sci-fi clichés against the banal and ever-present bigotry of the era. And at every turn, it is the bigotry that hums with the greater evil.”
“Ruff confidently displaces Lovecraft’s stereotypes… introducing fully-realized characters (both men and women) rich with intelligence, desire, and charisma… The slippery dialogue and suspense-soaked prose make Lovecraft Country—a challenge to one of the most recognizable legacies in science fiction—worth every dime.”
“[The] characters are some of the most fully realized and human I’ve ever encountered, neither idealized nor stereotyped… It might be my favorite Matt Ruff novel yet, and that’s saying something.”
“Is it too early to declare Lovecraft Country my favorite book of 2016? It’s only February, but every new book from here on out has a mighty high mountain to climb if it wants to even come close.”
“Lovecraft Country is a genre-bending attempt to address the severe problem of race in modern America, skewering the prejudices of older pulp works while maintaining their flavor, but it’s also a compulsively readable horror-fantasy in its own right: timely, terrifying, and hilarious.”
“Ruff, a cult favorite for his mind-bending fiction, vividly portrays racism as a horror worse than anything conceived by Lovecraft in this provocative, chimerical novel.”
“Ruff has created a story that’s as compelling as it is exciting—and the result is definitely one of the most important books of 2016.”
Available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats:
A novel of Jim Crow America that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and Lovecraftian horror and fantasy.
Chicago, 1954. When his father goes missing, twenty-two-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Samuel Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors—they encounter both the mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.
Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal, the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to perform a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction.
A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of two black families, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that still haunts us today.
