Andrew McMillan, Eric Gregory Award-winning poet and author of Pity and playtime, has praised Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking, the stunning forthcoming debut by Bridport Prize shortlistee Han Smith.

McMillan described Portraits as “a kaleidoscopic and beguiling novel, where the meaning of language itself is refracted back to the reader through a funhouse mirror. A singular and thrilling debut that shows what happens when objective truth and meaning are drowned in the shifting river of history and politics.”

The almost daughter is almost normal, because she knows how to know and also not know.

She knows and does not know, for instance, about the barracks by the athletics field, and about the lonely woman she visits each week. She knows—almost—about ghosts, and their ghosts, and she knows not to have questions about them. She knows to focus on being a woman: on training her body and dreaming only of escape.

Then, the almost daughter meets Oksana. Oksana is not even almost normal, and the questions she has are not normal at all.

Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is a story of seeing and part-seeing, of silence and speaking out, of conformation and confrontation, by an exhilarating new voice in fiction. You can read an extract from Portraits and a short introductory essay from Han in Encounters here.

Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking will be released on 20th June 2024. You can pre-order your copy here now.

Follow Han on Twitter @Han_Smiff.