Karen Russell

[Written] with Twilight Zone-like inventiveness and the energy and brio of a natural fantasist with a proclivity for blending the real and surreal, the psychological and the sci-fi. . . . [Russell] creates a fully imagined world with its own rituals and rules, and deftly satirizes the media and governmental responses to the plague of sleeplessness. . . . Another testament to her fertile powers of invention.

A starkly dystopian novella reminiscent of George Saunders in its bleak humor, the directness of its prose.

Russell wrote Sleep Donation over half a decade ago, yet her nightmarish vision of a nation keelhauled by an insomnia epidemic now registers as shockingly prescient. . . . [Russell has] the finest imagination in contemporary fiction. Sleep Donation is Russell at the height of her formidable powers, at once an eerie evocation of a country whose sins have come home to roost, as well as a deeply personal story of grief and terror.” —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire

Russell’s gift is to provide deep immersion in the details, and in Trish’s haunting, urgent emotions. . . . Russell offsets . . . expertly induced unease with humour and wry social commentary.

Wonderful. . . . Like George Saunders, Russell writes with a Swiftian sense of satire. . . . Russell has a keen sense of dramatic timing and an even sharper ability to turn an internal state into its own weather system.

A tense but captivating read, eerie in its prescience. . . . [A] philosophical meditation on dreams and consciousness, and a moving examination of love and empathy.

The combination of Russell’s dazzling imagination and virtuosic prose adds up to pleasurable sensory overload.

Russell handles the extraordinary in a humorous manner. . . . Sleep Donation's magical realism flare makes it not your average dystopia.

A tense but captivating read, eerie in its prescience. . . . [A] philosophical meditation on dreams and consciousness, and a moving examination of love and empathy.

Russell specializes in creating fantastical worlds that hum with recognizable rhythms. She excels at marrying the commonplace with the extraordinary.

Signature Russell: a fanciful, droll, elaborately thought-through allegory with a dark center. . . . Russell’s language . . . is acrid, luminous, and deft. . . . She will chase down every flicker of ordinary experience and return with descriptions of uncanny aptness. . . . Her sentences both resonate with familiarity and startle with beauty.

Weird, hilarious, and brilliant.

An audaciously allegorical novella. . . . As engaging as it is provocative.

Amidst the leading pack of talents Karen Russell writes the most like she’s on fire, as in: this close to revelations. Orange World is her best collection yet. Her imagination’s baroque syntax has been planed down to the absolute essentials, allowing the power of her vision to speak for itself...This is prophetic work written with clarifying fury.

Virtuoso Russell, gifted with acute insights, compassion, and a daring, free-diving imagination, explores the bewitching and bewildering dynamic between "the voracious appetite of nature and its yawning indifference" and humankind's relentless profligacy and obliviousness.

Eight crisp stories that will leave longtime fans hungry for more. Since her debut more than a decade ago, Russell has exhibited a commitment to turning recognizable worlds on their heads in prose so rich that sentences almost burst at the seams. Her third collection is no exception, and its subjects—forgotten pockets of violent American history, climate-related apocalypse, the trials of motherhood—feel fresh and urgent in her care...A momentous feat of storytelling in an already illustrious career.

[A] brilliantly inventive... wonderful new collection of short stories...Russell grounds each story in human experience, both poignant and hilarious in turn... Underlying all of this is the exquisite beauty of Russell’s sentences, which will repeatedly surprise readers with their imagery and masterful language.

Russell is a master of landscapes exterior and interior, with Orange World moving as deftly through a future Florida underwater as through 'that topography of the early weeks and months right after childbirth'... She has always used a phantasmagorical road map to chart her way through emotional terrain.

Is there a colorist in American fiction with the same vivid talents as Karen Russell?... Her stories read like a moon-lit fantasia of these wrenching days when up is down and nature is in full revolt. These eight fabulous yarns span the globe, from the Dalmatian coast to Florida in the near future, when Miami is a watery grave... These tales are not short, but they feel even roomier owing to the way Russell cracks open narrative space with humor. Her descriptions are 21st century Dickensian genius... Russell is also the greatest user of verbs in American fiction since Annie Dillard... In these stories, though, Russell reveals we don’t have to be silent. We can shout as does this book. Look for it, with its color, it won’t be hard to find. It’s a beacon.

[A] masterpiece... Incandescent... horror always cohabits with humor... [A] superb collection.

Another set of masterpieces…Russell’s language rockets off the page…one of our most entrancing storytellers.

Astonishing. . . . Vampires in the Lemon Grove stands out as Russell’s best book . . . with prose so alive it practically backflips off the page.

From apparent influences as disparate as George Saunders, Saki, Stephen King, Carson McCullers and Joy Williams, [Russell] has fashioned a quirky, textured voice that is thoroughly her own: lyrical and funny, fantastical and meditative.