Lote

by Shola von Reinhold

Paperback

Status

Available

Call number

823.92

Tags

Fiction

Genres

Collections

Your library, Literature

Publication

Tharpa Publications

Description

"Solitary Mathilda has long been enamored with the 'Bright Young Things' of the 20s, and throughout her life, her attempts at reinvention have mirrored their extravagance and artfulness. After discovering a photograph of the forgotten Black modernist poet Hermia Druitt, who ran in the same circles as the Bright Young Things that she adores, Mathilda becomes transfixed and resolves to learn as much as she can about the mysterious figure. Her search brings her to a peculiar artists' residency in Dun, a small European town Hermia was known to have lived in during the 30s. The artists' residency throws her deeper into a lattice of secrets and secret societies that takes hold of her aesthetic imagination, but will she be able to break the thrall of her Transfixions? From champagne theft and Black Modernisms, to art sabotage, alchemy and lotus-eating proto-luxury communist cults, Mathilda's journey through modes of aesthetic expression guides her to truth and the convoluted ways it is made and obscured"--… (more)

Media reviews

Bomb
“Shola von Reinhold, in her novel Lote / (A book which I advise you to procure) / Says ornament’s divine, one should devote / One’s soul to it, that that’s what life is for.”
— 12 more
Public Books
"Lote is like catnip for an academic audience: the novel is about intellectual labor and archival erasure, a kind of speculative fiction of Black trans/queer life largely absent from the British modernist canon. . . . Drop what you are doing and order a copy right now!"
The Daily Wildcat
"This book works to unpack the whitewashing, as well as the suppression of queerness, throughout history as Mathilda discovers more about Hermia and the residency’s role in her erasure. Written by a queer person for queer people, this book deals with the subject matter in an intersectional and
Show More
 refreshing way."
Show Less
Bay Area Reporter
"A tour de force. . . . The luscious, textured writing is astonishingly good, full of surprises and little-known information. . . . Truly brilliant . . . on every level, leaving the reader very much wanting more."
Gay & Lesbian Review
"Author Shola von Reinhold's very first book, LOTE, is a tour de force. . . . The luscious, textured writing is astonishingly good, full of surprises and little-known information."
The Guardian
" I will never stop recommending this book."
The Paris Review
"A heady novel that explores, in multiple genres and forms—comedy of errors, writing-retreat novel, book within a book—the erasure of Black art from gallery walls, history books, and archives. . . . Von Reinhold’s sensual sentences unfurl like ethereal greenery as you read."
Foreword
"LOTE is a novel about the nature of art and about who gets to participate in its creation."
Irish Times
“LOTE is a rapturous first novel, a queer black fantasy with angels leaping off every page.”
The Guardian
“As a celebration of eccentric esprit, LOTE practises what it preaches by being stubbornly its own thing.”
White Review
“In choosing to conjure Black voices through historical revisionism, rather than, say, Afrofuturism or pure fiction, the novel produces a new archive—a radical reference tool populated by real and imagined historical figures, Anons who have been festooned, fleshed-out, and freed from the rude
Show More
 imposition of marginality, anonymity and defacement.”
Show Less
AnOther Magazine
“Set amid an artist residency, this arresting debut effortlessly explores infatuation, reinvention, the erasure of black figures from history and gender identities in what marks von Reinhold as a unique new voice in literary fiction.”
Frieze Magazine
“Von Reinhold’s rich and glorious writing . . . reads as though—to put it in their own description of a room draped in candlelight—everything has been smeared with gold oil. . . . It’s more than just the bliss of representation: history here is feeling, not just narrative.”

Awards

James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Winner — Fiction — 2020)

Language

English

Original language

English

Physical description

7.8 inches

ISBN

1913090116 / 9781913090111

More

Amazon.com
Page: 0.3391 seconds