Orange World

Ingenious, reality-warping, darkly funny, and exquisitely composed story collection rooted in myth and horror... Russell writes with mischievous clarity, wit, and conviction, grounding the most bizarre situations in the ordinary

Booklist

A feast of invention and a fun house of surprising wisdom, Orange World contains a ghost-ship lodge, tourist trade in a post-apocalyptic drowned city, a tornado farm, a local succubus. Karen Russell moves from the farcical to the forbidden with tender conviction. Don't miss this book of marvels

Louise Erdrich

Eight crisp stories that will leave longtime fans hungry for more. Since her debut more than a decade ago, Russell has exhibited a commitment to turning recognizable worlds on their heads in prose so rich that sentences almost burst at the seams. Her third collection is no exception, and its subjects—forgotten pockets of violent American history, climate-related apocalypse, the trials of motherhood—feel fresh and urgent in her care...A momentous feat of storytelling in an already illustrious career

Kirkus, starred review

Amidst the leading pack of talents Karen Russell writes the most like she’s on fire, as in: this close to revelations. Orange World is her best collection yet. Her imagination’s baroque syntax has been planed down to the absolute essentials, allowing the power of her vision to speak for itself...This is prophetic work written with clarifying fury

John Freeman, Lit Hub

Brilliant... Stunning... Her imagination is boundless... Russell's last book, Vampires in the Lemon Grove was far and away one of the best books of 2013, and Orange World proves that the author has only gotten better... Russell is one of the most original American authors working today. She's also one of the best. Orange World is a thing of beauty, a stunning collection from one of the most brilliant literary minds of her generation

NPR

The must-read short-story collection of the summer... Orange World makes me want to shout with joy. Russell's ease with her material, her sheer glee on the page, shines through in each piece... Delicious... We're in the hands of a master

Washington Post

One of our most original short story writers... Russell has impeccable command of her form... Russell’s particular gift lies in taking themes that are close to universal and presenting them in stories whose strangeness comes to seem entirely natural, even necessary

New York Times Book Review

I kept Hawthorne in mind while reading Russell's astonishing new stories... Russell seems the most natural storyteller alive, so completely does she give herself to premises that might undo a lesser writer

New York Review of Books

Marvelous... Startlingly inventive stories which confirm Russell's status as master of the slipstream

San Francisco Chronicle

Another set of masterpieces in miniature…Russell’s language rockets off the page…one of our most entrancing storytellers

Vogue

Russell creates fully realized worlds. Her writing is particular and alive. Her imagination spills over the sink and hits the backsplash

Dwight Garner, New York Times

Russell exposes the central core of the strange in the familiar landmarks of American history. Incandescent…horror always cohabits with humor...A superb collection

Maureen Corrigan, Wall Street Journal

Superbly crafted...the weird and the outlandish exist side-by-side with everyday concerns... Russell is among the most skilled of this generation’s fabulist writers. In her surreal worlds, life is passing strange, but it is not devoid of wry comfort

Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times

Russell’s writing inhabits its own universe, with metaphor and simile taking us to strange new places; we are led by the hand and find ourselves completely submerged, only later to come to, groggily, in our own world... The worlds of the stories are entirely convincing, small pockets in which it is possible to become lost... Orange World demonstrates how her attention to this tricky craft has paid off. Though her characters are living their own magic-realist, fabulist lives, it is possible to see ourselves within them, peering out.

Daisy Johnson, Guardian

magic...The scope of Russell's imagine is hard to conceive – you'll need to read to believe.

Independent

I loved Orange World by Karen Russell, which is a collection of short stories in which demons live in drains, bog women come back from the dead and trees can grow inside the human body

Daisy Johnson, New Statesman, Books of the Year

A mesmerising, often hilarious, new collection that embraces survival, love and magnificent transformation

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday, *Books of the Year*

A rare combination of literary brilliance and unbridled entertainment

Mark Haddon