Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking, the stunning forthcoming debut by Bridport Prize shortlistee Han Smith, has received praise from Selby Wynn Schwartz, author of the Booker-longlisted After Sappho.

Schwartz writes: “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.”

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.

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.