Gone to the Forest

From the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Longshot, a gripping, psychologically intense novel about the destruction of a family, a farm, and a country.

Set on a struggling farm in a fiercely beautiful colonial country teetering on the brink of civil war, this second novel by one of literature’s rising young stars weaves a brilliant tale of family drama and political turmoil. Since his mother’s death ten years earlier, Tom and his father have fashioned a strained peace on their family farm. Everything is frozen under the old man’s vicious, relentless control — even, Tom soon discovers, his own future. When a young woman named Carine enters their lives, the complex triangle of intrigue and affections escalates the tension between the two men to the breaking point. After a catastrophic volcanic eruption ignites the nation’s smoldering discontent into open revolution, Tom, his father, and Carine find themselves questioning their loyalties to one another and their determination to salvage their way of life.

With the author’s trademark spare, spellbinding prose, Gone to the Forest delivers a powerful tale of unfathomable loss and ultimate redemption.

"In this wondrous tale of both a family and a country's dissolution, Kitamura brings readers into an unspecified time in an unnamed colonial country where the natives are restless and the white settlers are soon to be relieved of what they've taken. In this newly unstable environment, alive with an increasingly destructive undercurrent, we meet Tom, heir to his family's estate, whose inertia and naivete make him an equally pitiable and winning character, particularly in contrast to his charismatic, domineering father, whose steady decline is detailed in spellbinding horror. On the brink of the country's and the family's decimation, a woman named Carine enters the scene and vies for the attention of both men. She is a manipulative, waiflike woman with a questionable past, and her competing tendencies toward self-destruction and self-preservation make for a vibrant conflict. Finally, there are Jose and Celeste, two bafflingly loyal servants whose connection to Tom and his father is both shocking and fitting. In her second novel (after The Longshot), Kitamura, with spare, mesmerizing prose, paints a memorable vision of emotional chaos echoed by geologic and political turmoil. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

“Katie Kitamura is a major talent. It is not often I read a book of controlled, illuminating, prose and it is even more rare that the story therein survives the style. I was reminded of the writings of Herta Müller and J.M. Coetzee, both important storytellers of our time and vanguards of form. Kitamura's spare, elegant and affecting work in Gone to the Forest brings the reader in and out of the nexus of three souls caught in a nameless land, in a nameless time, and gently observes as they try to give name to their relation to one another, to the land, to the times and to themselves. Gone to the Forest is a book of atmospheres and moods, details and desires and Kitamura handles the nuances with the grace and confidence of a writer beyond her years.”Laleh Khadivi, author of The Age of Orphans

“I have been in a daze ever since I finished this book. Gone to the Forest is superb. It is so beautifully written, so balanced — there isn't a spare sentence or word in the whole thing. Utterly distinctive, it is almost allegorical in its force. Kitamura is of the best living writers I've read, and she gives the dead ones a run for their money.” Evie Wyld, author of After the Fire a Still Small Voice

"The death-throes of a colonial world captured in dark, obsessive prose, punctuated by images of strange, surreal beauty: the falling ash, the river of dead fish. One thinks at times of both Coetzee and Gordimer, but Kitamura is very much her own writer, and makes you feel keenly the tragedy of her three lost souls." Salman Rushdie

"A watchful and magnificent work. From the first page, Kitamura is in complete control, both of the prose and of the story it carries. She is a skilled hunter and we are her helpless prey." Teju Cole, author of Open City

“Gone to the Forest is a stark, urgent, beautiful novel. Katie Kitamura merges history and fable to create an explosive narrative about people trapped by terrible events they cannot control, but in which they are also deeply implicated. Its themes are ambitious — guilt and innocence, power and submission, meaning and nonsense. The characters and images of Gone to the Forest continue to haunt me, a tribute to their lasting emotional power and their creator’s extraordinary gifts.” Siri Hustvedt, author of The Summer Without Men

“Gone to the Forest is a mesmerizing novel, one whose force builds inexorably as its story unfolds in daring, unexpected strokes. Kitamura’s prose brings to mind Cormac McCarthy or Jean Rhys, but the music of these lines is all her own — lyrical, sharp-edged, spare, and unafraid. Be warned: you’ll find yourself reading long past midnight, out of breath and wide awake. This is a bold and powerful book.” Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge

“A ruthless, controlled style distinguishes this novel about a man and his oppressive father in an unnamed colonial country that’s about to blow....[Kitamura’s] style reminds one of Marguerite Duras and Herta Müller — writers who have had to reckon with power in the colonial Indochina and the repressive Romania, respectively. Power is the subject, and the execution is precise.” The Daily Beast

“Kitamura’s words are tough, and her characters are tied to the tails of wounded beasts: mother countries, the land itself, and hierarchies both out of steam and out of date....Kitamura makes the end of history — many histories — seem both casual and immediate.” Sasha Frere-Jones, NewYorker.com

“In this wondrous tale of both a family and a country’s dissolution, Kitamura brings readers into an unspecified time in an unnamed colonial country....Kitamura, with spare, mesmerizing prose, paints a memorable vision of emotional chaos echoed by geologic and political turmoil.” Publishers Weekly, (starred review)

“[Kitamura’s] unidentified place and time, and the actions and motivations of these three human cyphers, ensure that readers will be pondering Gone to the Forest long after they finish that final sentence.” Booklist

“Hypnotic prose [with] flashes of unexpected beauty…so spare as to almost be incantatory… It marvelously suggests the chaotic, contradictory and highly changeable way the mind works....Gone to the Forest, in just 200 pages, floats, unfolds and astonishes.” Marie Myung-Ok Lee, San Francisco Chronicle

"Gone to the Forest is Katie Kitamura's second novel, about a family and the cost of European colonization in an unknown time and place... that recalls, at first and most often, J.M. Coetzee's South Africa. Kitamura writes with fine tension and clipped grace. Her observations are subtle and sharp. The volcano's importance in the story evokes Aime Cesaire's poem Corps Perdu, which begins, 'Moi, qui Krakatoa ...' and is a soaring command, in the wake of decolonization, for 'the islands to be.' [She is a] rising literary star." The Spectator

From the critically acclaimed author of The Longshot comes this gripping saga about the destruction of a family, a home, and a way of life. Set on a struggling farm in a colonial country teetering on the brink of civil war, Gone to the Forest is a tale of family drama and political turmoil in which fiery storytelling melds with daring, original prose. Since his mother’s death, Tom and his father have fashioned a strained domestic peace, where everything is frozen under the old man’s vicious control. But when a young woman named Carine arrives at the farm, the tension between the two men escalates to the breaking point. Hailed by the Boston Globe as “a major talent,” Kitamura shines in this powerful new novel.

Katie Kitamura is based in New York. She has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times, Wired, and The Guardian, and is a regular contributor to Frieze.