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)

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)

A watchful and magnificent work. From the first page, 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, author of Open City)

A stark, urgent, beautiful novel. Katie Kitamura merges history and fable to create an explosive narrative about people trapped by terrible events they cannot control, but in which they are also deeply implicated. Its themes are ambitious - guilt and innocence, power and submission, meaning and nonsense. The characters and images of Gone to the Forest 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)

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)

Evokes a Conradian Heart of Darkness portentousness . . . flashes of unexpected beauty . . . Like the intricate ingenuity of the floating farm flush with the golden fish, Gone to the Forest, in just 200 pages, floats, unfolds and astonishes. (Marie Myung-Ok Lee San Francisco Chronicle 2012-08-07)