September 5th, 2019

Karen Havelin’s debut novel shortlisted for Not the Booker Prize 2019

Karen Havelin’s debut Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is one of six books that have been shortlisted for this year’s Not the Booker Prize! Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is the story of a woman whose body has become her enemy. The novel tracks backward, from 2016 until 1995, etching details of daily life into a gripping and darkly humorous bildungsroman, exploring the intricacies of love and life in a fragile body. Jarringly funny and perceptive; an intimate reckoning with the inner demons and precarity of everyday life, unpacked through the very specific lens of a woman living with chronic pain.

Karen Havelin’s debut novel is now out in the UK with Dead Ink, in the US with Dottir Press and in Norway with Cappelen Damm, and Catalan rights have just been sold to Angle Editorial. Karen is still busy promoting her book in the UK, US and Norway and, since its simultaneous publication in all three countries, Please Read This Leaflet Carefully has received some rave reviews.

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'This intense study of endometriosis, its agonies and its neglect by medical science, is very powerful ... Havelin dares you to turn away – but that’s impossible' Sam Jordison, Guardian

'A forceful debut … [a] screed on the fight for normalcy against a backdrop of persistent agony' Publishers Weekly

'This reminds me a little of Sight by Jess Greengrass and a little of Wilful Disregard by Lena Andersson. But it is of course its own beast' Rowan Hiyaso Buchanan author of Harmless Like You

For more information, please contact Maria Cardona.