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A Novel
by Agnieszka Szpila
An explosive, jaw-dropping debut about a woman who loses her job as an oil company CEO after she's filmed having sex with a tree in her sleep, a calamity that unravels her mind, spiraling her through history until she's united with a centuries-old coven of ecstatically revolutionary women.
Anna Frenza hates the tyrannical tree huggers and the idiotic eco-warriors—after all, she's the CEO of Poland's biggest oil company. But then she finds herself in a trance, sleepwalking into the woods and making love to a tree, manically—all caught on camera. Her career ends and, in the fallout, she discovers her husband's disturbing secret. Her mind splinters until she is no longer Anna Frenza, CEO. Now—whether by delusion or possession of spirit—she lives in the Duchy of Nysa, a medieval province ruled by the Catholic Church.
From her psychiatric bed, Anna falls in with Mathilde Spalt, leader of the Earthen Ones—a congregation of women who live in the woods and reject all patriarchy, instead engaging in ecstatic, sensuous worship of Mother Earth. Through Mathilde, Anna learns to love the forest, preaching and practicing the emancipatory rituals of the Earthen Ones ... until the Church decides to fell the forest and all the women within it.
Bold and entirely unexpected, The Hexes of the Deadwood Forest is a collective rebellion and a collective orgasm, the death knell to the elevation of the erect. Take hold of your seat; patriarchy is coming to an end.
"[A] sprawling, bawdy comic...Szpila spins a rich, imaginative alternative to the usual phallocentric history." —Kirkus Reviews
"[A] wild ecofeminist debut... . [driven by] intriguing ideas on gender, climate change, and religion... . Arresting." —Publishers Weekly
"In this ribald, diabolically clever, fiercely feminist satire, daring Polish writer Szpila radiantly imagines three generations of women...[Her] lacerating, sly, ecosexual tale offers recalibrating perspectives on history, sex, the sacred, environmental decimation, and woman power." —Booklist
This information about Hexes of the Deadwood Forest was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Agnieszka Szpila is one of Poland's most critically acclaimed, bestselling, and transgressive writers. The Polish edition of the The Hexes of the Deadwood Forest was longlisted for the Nike Award, the country's premiere literary award, and will be published in at least nine countries around the world.
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