The Vivisectors

About the Book

‘A novel to marvel at’ SOPHIE MACKINTOSH

‘Like Karl Ove Knausegaard at the end of the world’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Astonishing’ MICHAEL MAGEE

‘Left me awestruck’ HANNAH MURRAY

The acclaimed author of The Doloriad returns with a wildly imaginative new novel following a reclusive graduate in a campus love story like no other.

In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss. One day, a campus scandal erupts: Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated conflict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination.

As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe’s boss instructs her to gather information by befriending Adam. Agathe soon finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth?

Coursing with icy suspense and rendered with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for a broken era. Missouri Williams holds up a mirror to humanity’s most intimate contradictions in a novel of blazing spiritual reckoning.

‘A singular brand of Ballardian ferocity – she revels in the wretched and the craven’ GUARDIAN

‘Her prose folds itself into the literary legacy of writers such as Clarice Lispector, Anna Kavan, Rachel Kushner and Ottessa Moshfegh’ OUR CULTURE

‘The anti-feel good hit of the year’ FERNANDO A. FLORES, author of Brother Brontë

‘Missouri Williams writes with a gothic angularity that puts her in a category of one. She swims in deep waters and surfaces now as a major writer for our age’ PAUL LYNCH, author of Prophet Song

'Wicked and beguiling' AMY TWIGG, author of Spoilt Creatures

‘Extraordinary imagination’ AMINA CAIN, author of Indelicacy

‘Beautiful, disturbing … I adored this’ HARRIET ARMSTRONG, author of To Rest Our Minds & Bodies

About the Author :

Missouri Williams is the author of The Doloriad, which won the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her work has also appeared in The Nation, The Baffler, The Believer, Granta and The Drift.

Review :
‘Reads more like Karl Ove Knausgaard at the end of the world … sharply intelligent’ Sunday Times ‘Williams writes with a singular brand of Ballardian ferocity – she revels in the wretched and the craven’ Guardian ‘Astonishingly good … she has immediately left the realm of the cult classic … and has landed firmly in the "best of her generation conversation’ Defector ‘Grips you with an invig­or­at­ing sense of its sheer dif­fer­ence from any­thing else out there’ Daily Mail ‘A compelling exploration of love, whether with another person or with God’ Financial Times ‘Incisive, tirelessly inspecting the structural imperfections of the grand but crumbling ivory towers atop its foundation … kaleidoscopic’ The Baffler ‘As brilliant as it is dark, full of unsettling, revelatory allegory, and frankly unlike anything I’ve read before’ Vulture ‘Her prose folds itself into the literary legacy of writers such as Clarice Lispector, Anna Kavan, Rachel Kushner and Ottessa Moshfegh’ Our Culture ‘Readers hoping for an easy time will be alarmed … Williams’s eye for the absurd keeps things light and fleet-footed’ Literary Review ‘Moves between satire, suspense and philosophical inquiry’ Tank Magazine ‘This is the modern rupture – our crisis of meaning and spiritual malaise shaped into a novel unlike any other’ Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song ‘An astonishing novel by an astonishing writer … I am in awe’ Michael Magee, author of Close To Home ‘Delightfully grotesque … The anti-feel good hit of the year’ Fernando A. Flores, author of Brother Brontë ‘A wicked and beguiling novel, written with the kind of precision other writers can only dream of’ Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures ‘Beautiful, disturbing … I could read this book a hundred times’ Harriet Armstrong, author of To Rest Our Minds & Bodies ‘A clever, wilful, daring novel’ Susannah Dickey, author of Common Decency ‘Hypnotic and sublimely disturbing’ Sara Baume, author of Seven Steeples