Rarely does a debut novel attract the sweeping critical acclaim of Ceridwen Dovey's Blood Kin. Shortlisted for two prestigious awards, this tale centers around a military coup in an unnamed country, with characters who have no names or any identifying physical characteristics. Known simply as the ex-President's chef, barber, and portrait painter, these three men perform their mundane tasks and appear unaware of the atrocities of their employer's regime. But when the President is deposed, the trio are revealed as less than innocent. A deeply chilling yet sensual novel, Blood Kin illustrates Lord Acton's famous quip, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," and marks the beginning of an illustrious literary career.

Blood Kin: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Dovey, Ceridwen

British & Irish

Penguin Publishing Group

In the Garden of the Fugitives

Literary

Penguin Books, Ltd.

Only the Animals: Stories

Perhaps only the animals can tell us what it is to be human The souls of ten animals caught up in human conflicts over the last century and connected to both famous and little-known writers in surprising ways tell their astonishing stories of life and death. In a trench on the Western Front, a cat recalls her owner Colette's theatrical antics in Paris. In Nazi Germany, a dog seeks enlightenment. A Russian tortoise once owned by the Tolstoys drifts in space during the Cold War. During the Siege of Sarajevo, a starving bear tells a fairy tale. And a dolphin sent to Iraq by the U.S. Navy writes a letter to Sylvia Plath. Exquisitely written, playful, and poignant, Ceridwen Dovey's Only the Animals is a remarkable literary achievement by one of our brightest young writers. An animal's-eye-view of humans at our brutal, violent worst and our creative, imaginative best, it asks us to find our way back to empathy not only for animals but for other people, and to believe again in the redemptive power of reading and writing fiction.

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Almost twenty years after forbidding him to contact her, Vita receives a letter from a man who has long stalked her from a distance. Once, Royce was her benefactor and she was one of his brightest protégées. Now Royce is ailing and Vita’s career as a filmmaker has stalled, and both have reasons for wanting to settle accounts. They enter into an intimate game of words, played according to shifting rules of engagement.
Beyond their murky shared history, they are both aware they can use each other to free themselves from deeper pasts. Vita is processing the shameful inheritance of her birthplace, and making sense of the disappearance of her beloved. Royce is haunted by memories of the untimely death of his first love, an archaeologist who worked in the Garden of the Fugitives in Pompeii. Between what’s been repressed and what has been disguised are disturbances that reach back through decades, even centuries. But not everything from the past is precious: each gorgeous age is built around a core of rottenness. 
Profoundly addictive and unsettling, In the Garden of the Fugitives is a masterful novel of duplicity and counterplay, as brilliantly illuminating as it is surprising―about the obscure workings of guilt in the human psyche, the compulsion to create and control, and the dangerous morphing of desire into obsession.

In the Garden of the Fugitives: A Novel

Arrested and forced to serve their country under a new regime when their president is overthrown by a military coup, a barber, a chef, a portraitist, and the women they love find their intimacies exposed by the government's new order. 20,000 first printing.

Contemporary

Viking Adult

An enthralling, daring collection of stories narrated by animals caught up in large-scale human wars and linked in personal or poetic ways to the great writers of their time.
In a trench on the Western Front, a cat recalls her owner Colette’s theatrical antics in Paris. In Nazi Germany, a dog seeks enlightenment. A Russian tortoise once owned by the Tolstoys drifts in space during the Cold War. During the siege of Sarajevo, a starving bear tells a fairy tale. And a dolphin sent to Iraq by the U.S. Navy writes a letter to Sylvia Plath.
Exquisitely written, playful, and poignant, Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals is a remarkable literary achievement by one of our brightest young writers. An animal’s-eye-view of humans at our brutal, violent worst and our creative, imaginative best, it asks us to find our way back to empathy not only for animals but for other people, and to believe again in the redemptive power of reading and writing fiction.

Picador

Profoundly addictive and unsettling, Ceridwen Dovey's In the Garden of the Fugitives is a masterful novel of duplicity and counterplay, as brilliantly illuminating as it is surprising―about the obscure workings of guilt in the human psyche, the compulsion to create and control, and the dangerous morphing of desire into obsession. 
Almost twenty years after forbidding him to contact her, Vita receives a letter from a man who has long stalked her from a distance. Once, Royce was her benefactor and she was one of his brightest protégées. Now Royce is ailing and Vita’s career as a filmmaker has stalled, and both have reasons for wanting to settle accounts. They enter into an intimate game of words, played according to shifting rules of engagement.
Beyond their murky shared history, they are both aware they can use each other to free themselves from deeper pasts. Vita is processing the shameful inheritance of her birthplace, and making sense of the disappearance of her beloved. Royce is haunted by memories of the untimely death of his first love, an archaeologist who worked in the Garden of the Fugitives in Pompeii. Between what’s been repressed and what has been disguised are disturbances that reach back through decades, even centuries. But not everything from the past is precious: each gorgeous age is built around a core of rottenness.

Only the Animals

ATLANTIC BOOKS *

Life After Truth

Swift Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dovey, Ceridwen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dovey, Ceridwen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dovey, Ceridwen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Blood Kin: A Novel

In the Garden of the Fugitives

Only the Animals: Stories

In the Garden of the Fugitives: A Novel

Blood Kin: A Novel

Only the Animals: Stories

In the Garden of the Fugitives: A Novel

Only the Animals

Life After Truth