The Apple and the Pearl

A luscious, mesmerizing tale of the dangerous land that lies between the art and the artist, and the deep, profound emotion we find there.
Christina Henry, author of Alice and The Place Where They Buried Your Haart


Dazzlingly lush prose marks a series of unforgettable character portraits in this literary fantasy masterpiece.
Caitlin Rozakis, New York Times-bestselling author of Dreadful


A beautiful, strange, bittersweet piece of faerie-fruit, The Apple and the Pearl performs the trick of the very best fantasy: it uses a wondrous backdrop of magic to sharply and brilliantly illuminate human nature. I ached, I cried, I devoured it eagerly. And I recommend it to everyone – but especially to dancers, musicians, and everyone who’s ever fallen in love with the guts of a theatre.
Freya Marske, author of A Marvellous Light


Rym Kechacha’s The Apple and the Pearl is a book for the senses, ambitious and intimate, miraculously woven of interlocking accounts. This is a book of liminal spaces and iron bells, of ghosts and love and longing. It rings inside the skin: the cacophony of the orchestra, the howl of the audience. Every character feels as close as a sibling, an arch rival, an object of infatuation, a lost friend. I can see them all so clearly: the dead, the Fair Folk, the dancers, and the Crow.
C. S. E. Cooney, author of World Fantasy Award-winning Saint Death’s Daughter


Enchanting … Kechacha weaves individual strands into a glimmering, dreamlike whole, darkened by nightmares that lurk in the wings. Fans of traditional stories of the Fae won’t want to miss this.”
Publishers Weekly


Equal parts enchanting and horrifying, The Apple and the Pearl is a stunning meditation on art: the gritty emotions that make us human, and the monstrous appetites an artist must cater to. A shocking sensual story wrapped in glossy ethereal tulle; a tale that is deeply nuanced, yet deceptively effortless.
Kritika H. Rao, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Legend of Meneka


A mesmerizing performance both on and off stage. It is a tale liminal, magical, with an underlying melancholic lull, like a mourning ballad, an eulogy for both people and memories with a sinister creeping tugging at the thin veil casted over the lurking shadows. Hypnotic and haunting, The Apple and the Pearl interweaves the spiritual and musical, while illuminating the sacrifices necessary for art and theatre.
Ai Jiang


A taut, soaring dance of a novel formed from precision, muscle, and grace; it moves through your body and lingers long after. Superb.
Tashan Mehta, author of The Mad Sisters of Esi


Shadowing a touring company across a single day, The Apple and the Pearl is an intricately woven tapestry of hopes, fears and dreams, as its ensemble cast wrestle with the things they can’t escape and those they must leave behind. At once deeply human and gorgeously strange, this is a fierce and tender portrait of life in thrall to art.
E. J. Swift, author of When There Are Wolves Again


Kechacha’s skill is matchless. The Apple and the Pearl is an evocative, beautifully weird celebration of performance, desire, and camaraderie.
Aliya Whiteley, award-winning author of The Beauty


Poetic, witty, relatable and bewitching … Readers are sure to be entranced.’
Lexy Hudson, author of Wonders Never Cease




PRAISE FOR RYM KECHACHA


Rym Kechacha has created an enchanting world, filled with the magical, mysterious and mesmerising. It left me spellbound.
– Elizabeth Lee, author of Cunning Women


It’s visionary. It’s passionate. It’s arty. It’s twisty and turn-y. It’s an extraordinary journey into the mind of two artists – Remedios Varo’s, and Rym Kechacha’s.
– Francesco Dimitri, author of The Book of Hidden Things and Never the Wind


A surreal, mystical, celestial wonder of a book! To Catch a Moon is an inspired creation.
– Oliver Langmead, author of Birds of Paradise and Glitterati


Exceptional, impossibly beautiful, important.
– Anna Smith Spark, author of the Empires of Dust trilogy


Dark River is a tender and lyrical novel with mythological power. In its exquisite description of places and people under threat, Kechacha’s work is full of care for a broken world.
– Naomi Booth, author of Sealed


A haunting narrative of climate change, human migration, and the fierceness and vulnerability of motherhood, Dark River is a compelling, devastating first novel. Rym Kechacha writes of cycles within cycles and how they echo across millennia, and reminds us that none of us are immune to the unstoppable forces of the times in which we are living.
– Lynda E. Rucker, award-winning author of The Moon Will Look Strange


The ambitious scope of the dual narratives is often startling, but the focus never strays. Rym Kechacha’s precise depiction of families striving against the odds makes for a gripping, haunting read.
– Tim Major, author of Snakeskins and Hope Island


“Dark River is a haunting parable for our times, weaving past and future together into an intricate tapestry of love, loss and the human desire for safety. A chilling but utterly essential read.”
– Helen Marshall, award-winning author of The Migration and Gifts for the One Who Comes After


“A work of narrative magic. It conjures its mirrored strands of families searching for survival with a rare and enviable skill. The love and determination of Shante and Shaye will stay in the mind for a long time.”
– Neil Williamson, author of The Memoirist and The Moon King


“With writing as sinuous and powerful as the water itself, Rym Kechacha provides a stark and beautiful testament to what we hold close on the hardest of days. Dark River is a story of love and determination mirrored across a gulf of time and dares us to consider what we owe the Earth and what the Earth owes us.”
– Peter Haynes, author of The Willow By Your Side


The lyrical atmosphere of Shaye’s world and the attention to the detail of prehistoric life reminded me of Jean M. Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear and Michelle Paver’s Wolf Brother.
– British Fantasy Society


Mr B’s 2020 Books of the Year – Dark River


The novel has a depth and complexity that lifts it beyond any simple labelling. There are no monsters to battle and no epic climaxes in this book. Rather, we are given a masterful insight into relationships: the mother/young son, woman/lover and sister/sister.
– Strange Horizons


Its celebration of the universal nature of human love and its evocative and haunting descriptions of changing landscapes … alleviate the darkness. It is a challenging but necessary book, beautifully written and likely to stay with the reader long after it finishes.
– Fantasy Faction