GONE TO THE FOREST - Softcover

The death-throes of a colonial world captured in dark, obsessive prose, punctuated by images of strange, surreal beauty. One thinks at times of both Coetzee and Gordimer, but Kitamura is very much her own writer (Salman Rushdie)

Beautifully observed ... the cumulative effect of this shocking, desperate book is something that approaches magnificent (FT 2013-02-16)

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 Open City)

A stark, urgent, beautiful novel. The characters and images 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')

A ruthless, controlled style distinguishes this novel ... [Kitamura's] style reminds one of Marguerite Duras and Herta Müller - power is the subject, and the execution is precise (The Daily Beast)

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)

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. Kitamura is one 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)

Hemingway's returned to life - and this time, he's a woman (Tom McCarthy, author of C, Remainder and Men in Space)

A relentless fever dream, each perfectly pared paragraph urging you on to the next (Ed Park, author of Personal Days)

There is nothing better on earth, fictive or not, than What Goes Wrong on the Plantation, and in Gone to the Forest it goes totally and splendidly wrong. (Padgett Powell 2012-06-11)

A gripping and psychologically intense novel about the destruction of a family, a farm, and a way of life, comparable to Coetzee's Disgrace, now in paperback.