Antiquity (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781646221714)

Elegant, slippery, and provocative, Antiquity is a queer Lolita story by prize-winning Swedish author Hanna Johansson--a story of desire, power, obsession, observation, and taboo

On a Greek island rich with ancient beauty, a lonely woman in her thirties upends the relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter. Lust and admiration for Helena, a chic older artist, brings Antiquity's unnamed narrator to Ermoupoli, where Helena's daughter, Olga, seems at first like an obstacle and a nuisance. But the unpredictable forces of ego and desire take over, leading our narrator down a more dangerous path, and causing the roles of lover and beloved, child and adult, stranger and intimate to become distorted. As the months go by, the fragile web connecting the three women nears rupture, and the ominous consequences of their entanglement loom just beyond a summer that must end.

With echoes of Death in Venice, Call Me by Your Name, and The Lover, but wholly original and contemporary, Antiquity probes the depths of memory, beauty, morality, and the narratives that arrange our experience of the world.

Author: Hanna Johansson
ISBN-10: 1646221710
ISBN-13: 9781646221714
Publisher: Catapult
Language: English
Published: 02/06/2024
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.83lbs
Size: 8.55h x 5.85w x 0.63d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 09/01/2023 pg. 3
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2023
Publishers Weekly 11/20/2023
Booklist 01/01/2024 pg. 22