Sister Europe

Praise

“To stay out late in Zink’s world, loitering, is a pleasure. . . . Her voice is cool and fastidious, but she has a screwball quality—a comic sensibility rooted in pain. She grinds her own sophisticated colors as a writer; her ironies are finely tuned; she is uniquely alert to the absurdities of human conduct.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

“This sly, sprightly novel provides a distraction from the news while the news is all over it. . . . One of the pleasures of Sister Europe is that it’s thoroughly up-to-date but still shaped in the timeless way of Wodehousian comedy of errors.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

“Picaresque, amusing, and brisk, this is a worldly hangout novel of 21st-century manners.”
—Vogue, “The Best Books of 2025—A Preview”

“Zink is one of the most humane writers we’ve got, and one of the best. . . . As ever, Zink is funny in a way that requires careful observation and precision. . . . The night narrated here feels like the kind of time outside of time in which classical comedies take place—a liminal space in which characters experience transformations impossible in the everyday world. Here, some characters find each other, some find their way home, and some get a bit closer to finding themselves.”
—Kirkus Review, starred

“Zink cleverly and expertly combines hilarious scenes with razor-sharp observations on culture, Americans in Europe, literature in the Middle East, sexuality, and the heavy hand of history.”
—Library Journal, starred