Author(s): Sophie Mackintosh

Novel | Historical | 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction long list

From the Booker-nominated author of The Water Cure - an eerie and erotic historical mystery about desire, memory and madness.

In 1951, still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit succumbed to a mass poisoning. The poison induced hysteria, violent and euphoric hallucinations, and many deaths.

In the years before the disaster, there lived in the town a woman named Elodie. She was the baker's wife- a plain, unremarkable person who yearned to transcend her dull existence. So when a charismatic new couple arrived in town, Elodie quickly fell under their glamorous spell. Thus began a dangerous game of cat and mouse, the intoxication of the chase slowly seeping into everything - but who was the predator and on whom did they prey?

Audacious and mesmerising, Cursed Bread is a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by madness, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

Review: A shimmering fever-dream of a novel, teasing the reader [..] while finding a fresh narrative framework for the relationship between monotonous small-town life and repressed female desire. Cursed Bread contains more riches than many a novel twice its length * Telegraph *
A quietly rich maturation of Mackintosh's skill... This is a book about the power desire and greed exert over reality and memory... Mackintosh has entered a brilliant new stage of writing * Guardian *
Nimble, terrifying... Mackintosh is a wonderful prose stylist and she uses many of the resources that served her well in her Booker prizenominated debut, The Water Cure: the slow unravelling of sanity, the isolated and mysterious setting, that feeling of panting, crawling, unfulfilled desire... A dreamy sapphic romp * The Times *
Sensual, luminous, transcendent... This tale of obsession, desire and betrayal has a timeless, dreamlike quality. It confirms Mackintosh as one of our finest young writers * The Bookseller, Editor's Choice *
A thrilling and subversive fable * i-D *
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 'You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine'
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'
Cursed Bread floored me on the first page and didn't let up for the rest of the journey. It always feels like a true privilege to spend time with Sophie Mackintosh's brilliant mind and she is only getting better and weirder and wilder. A knockout -- Megan Nolan, author of 'Acts of Desperation'
Her writing is so sleek, the characters mysterious and yet indelible - a taut, seductive, thrilling gem of a novel -- Olivia Sudjic, author of 'Asylum Road'
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'
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
Bloody, sexy, sinister, strange. This book will take hold of you -- Saba Sams, author of 'Send Nudes'
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'
Pristine, visceral & wild. She's a master. You won't be disappointed -- Sarah Rose Etter, author of 'The Book of X'
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'

Author Biography: Sophie Mackintosh is the author of three novels- The Water Cure, Blue Ticket and Cursed Bread. Her debut novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and won a Betty Trask Award 2019. She has been published in Granta, The White Review and TANK magazine among others. Cursed Bread will be published by Hamish Hamilton in March 2023.