Cursed Bread

Praise

Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by LitHub

“Intoxicating, sumptuous, and savage, Cursed Bread has a gothic sensibility that is entirely original. In Mackintosh’s hands, the strange, compulsive machinations of desire become luminous and ghastly all at once.”
—Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

“Vivid and shocking, written with stunning, incantatory prose, Cursed Bread is the kind of book that upends your nervous system.” 
—Julia May Jonas, author of Vladimir

“Cursed Bread floored me in its first page and didn’t let up for the rest of its strange, hot, festering journey. It always feels like a true privilege to be allowed time with Sophie Mackintosh’s brilliant mind and her third novel just confirms that she is only getting better and weirder and wilder. A knockout.” 
—Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desparation

“Her writing is so sleek, the characters mysterious and yet indelible—a taut, seductive, thrilling gem of a novel.”
—Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy and Asylum Road

“Cursed Bread is a gorgeously atmospheric and feverishly compulsive novel about amorphous longings and desires, and the hot shame of wanting more than you deserve.”
—Lara Williams, author of Supper Club and The Odyssey

“Sensuous and haunted, like Madame Bovary reworked as a ghost story—an incredible book about desire, pleasure, beauty. Sophie’s fiction always has a gauzy quality, filled with strange, languid images, which rise to a narrative crescendo like clues in a detective novel. She makes it look effortless.”
—Jo Hamya, author of Three Rooms

“The thing I love most about this book is that even if you know the plot, there’s no way to anticipate how Sophie Mackintosh handles the narrative. The sentences here are pristine, the structure is on point, the entire novel unravels into the grotesque in an ending that is visceral & wild. She’s a master. You won’t be disappointed. But then again, with Sophie’s books, you never are.”
—Sarah Rose Etter, author of The Book of X

“Sophie Mackintosh takes a true story and asks what any of us really know about what is true? Our desires poison us. Shame and longing intertwine. We hide even from ourselves…This novel is subtle and devouring; reading it is like being slowly swallowed by the night.”
—Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days

“Everything Sophie Mackintosh is so febrile and tactile, when you read her books you feel as if you live in them. The world felt so eerie after finishing Cursed Bread. I didn’t feel quite the same as I was before, but in the best way.”
—Annie Lord, author of Notes on Heartbreak

“Bloody, sexy, sinister, strange. This book will take hold of you.”
—Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes