by Jenny Hval
A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery.
Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo's sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.
This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.
"Strange and lyrical … Hval's writing is surreal and rich with the grotesque banalities of human existence." —Publishers Weekly
"Hval is an artist of many questions—the ones she asks, and those she provokes in the listener. Apocalypse, Girl swerves from decipherable politics to recondite personal imagery. It's not a paraphrasable album, but it is a listenable one, its avant-garde tendencies held in check by Hval's beguiling voice." —New Yorker
"In Paradise Rot, Jenny Hval creates a parallel world that's familiar but subtly skewed. As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder." —Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick
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Norwegian musician and writer Jenny Hval has honed an intellectual and uncompromising view of politics and sexuality in her prose as well as in records that include Blood Bitch; Apocalypse, Girl; and Innocence Is Kinky. Paradise Rot is the first of her books to appear in English.

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