Paul

The critically acclaimed debut novel from the T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet--Frances is a graduate student spending a summer volunteering in rural France, in the hope that tending vegetables and harvesting honey will distract her from a scandal that drove her out of Paris, her research unfinished and her sense of self unmoored.At the eco-farm Noa Noa, she comes under the influence of its charismatic and domineering owner, Paul. As his hold over her tightens and her plans come unstuck, she finds herself entangled in a strange, uneven relationship. On a fraught road trip across the South of France, both are forced to reckon with uncomfortable truths. A compelling and perturbing story of power, passivity and the cage of being 'good', Paul introduces a novelist of extraordinary perspicacity and lyricism.

I cherished this moreish, dreamy, hazy novel... I know I will return many times to inhabit the world Lafarge has written so exquisitely, Crisp and elegant, the sentences both vivid and precise... With an intelligence lightly worn, this is an immersive, maddening, unsettling read, Daisy Lafarge's debut is a force to be reckoned with: all sinewy prose and sharp compulsion, with deep insight about the choreography of power and its eerie, unsettling flavor. As she pulls on the loose threads of the male artist's mythos, more unravels than mere secrets, Highly readable... with a sensual elegance and sense of foreboding, A work of dark, shimmering genius, which explores the toxicity of patriarchy with excoriating intelligence, verve and originality

Daisy Lafarge was born in Hastings and studied at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Her poetry collection Life Without Air (Granta Books, 2020) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her visual work has been exhibited in galleries such as Tate St Ives and Talbot Rice Gallery. Paul, the winner of a Betty Trask Award, is her debut novel.