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.

Praise for Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking:

“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.” -Andrew McMillan, Eric Gregory Award-winning poet and author of Pity and playtime.

“Tender and merciless… a hallucinatory window into what it means to excavate the past in a world committed to its erasure” -Abigail Shinn, Goldsmiths Prize Judge.

“The portraits in this book are eloquently oblique and profoundly empathetic, dredging up meanings from under the river that runs over undesired histories. Han Smith slides round the side of the unsayable by turning language over to its silver side.” -Selby Wynn Schwartz, author of the Booker-longlisted After Sappho.

“Intimate, intricate, and ultimately irresistible. Smith’s unforgettable style builds a political–personal narrative that resounds to the drumbeat of resistance and rebellion.” -Ruby Cowling, Orwell Prize-longlisted author of This Paradise.

“This ambitious debut uncovers a town’s dark past. […] Smith is a linguist, and a writer who clearly pays supreme attention to the dynamics of language” -A K Blakemore, The Guardian.

“Like being in a hall of mirrors where you think you’ve caught Smith’s eye but it’s just a reflection. When something slips into view between the glass, you get that uncanny feeling you’re staring back at yourself. A mysterious quest of excavation.” -Jen Calleja, Booker International-longlisted author and translator.

“A strange, intriguing and creepy tale from an exhilarating new voice in fiction.” -Camilla Grudova, Women’s Prize-longlisted author of Children of Paradise.

“Insightful, affecting and assured … written with a poetry as defamiliarising as it is rich.” -Oisin Fagan, Desmond Elliot Prize-longlisted author of Nobber.

“Extraordinary.” -Adam Zmith, Creative Futures Writers’ Award shortlistee and author of Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures.

Find Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking at Amazon.