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Published: 07/10/2021

A breathtaking work of new magic realism, Lickorish Quinn’s debut follows a pregnant woman who returns to Lima to sell her ancestral home, only to find the house inhabited by ghosts that won’t let her be.
'I have seen ghosts. They will not rest. The whispers of the past are all around...'
Anais Echevarria is returning to Lima to sell her ancestral home, the notorious 'yellow house' that looms over the sprawling capital below, its history woven into the fabric of the city. But concealed within its walls are spectres from the past that demand her attention, the echoing voices of the family who lived in this grand home, and the injustices on which both the country and the house were built.
In Lima, where elapsed time coats every surface like a layer of fine dust, these ghosts will not rest until the sins of the past are atoned for. And, while Anais comes to terms with her history, the present threatens to overwhelm her. Pregnant, nervous and alone, what begins as an uneasy homecoming soon becomes a reckoning with secrets that refuse to stay buried.
Perfect for fans of Isabel Allende and Kazuo Ishiguro, this hauntingly beautiful debut will seduce, entice and mesmerise.
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
ISBN: 9780861540440
Number of pages: 384
Dimensions: 234 x 153 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Once inside this decaying mansion, [Anaïs] and we are transfixed by a series of spectres from the Echeverrías' history. Lickorish Quinn's best sentences… flow through present participles that conjure sights and sounds… strange, and spectacular.'
'A heady blend of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in which stories and visions proliferate dizzyingly in all directions, this is an impressive first outing.'
'An absolute must-read. I was glued to its pages from the first to the last and am still struggling to believe that such an accomplished creation is Quinn's debut… A wonderfully immersive experience.'
'The writing is brilliant, the scope of the novel is quite astounding especially given it is a debut… Did it make my head spin – yes it did. Would I recommend it on to others – yes I would. Would I read her next novel – yes I would.'
'Lickorish Quinn's magnificent debut enchants from first page to last... A breath-taking writer of singular voice.'
'A mesmerising feat of imagination and a masterful debut.'
'Karina Lickorish Quinn is the new face of magic realism. She has given it, through Anaïs, a female body and soul… She makes it sing, she makes it work and she has built a world that stands on its own three feet. Like its title, The Dust Never Settles will stay floating inside the reader, impossible to forget or unsee.'
'An innovative and precisely imagined exploration of identity, family, ghosts, and the intersection between personal and national history. It swept me away.'
'The Dust Never Settles is ambitious, fascinating and endlessly inventive – a time-bending, kaleidoscopic fever dream in which the living coexist with the dead, and the past with present.'
'Karina Lickorish Quinn has rendered on the page a person and a place in all their conflicted histories so convincingly and dizzyingly and singularly that the very ink haunts. It leaves a shadow text on the reader’s psyche. The Dust Never Settles is a marvelous, vertiginous work that mercilessly conveys the post-colonial state.'
'Always colourful, its magical realism beautifully realised, this novel brims with Peruvian folklore and history as Anaïs negotiates ghosts from the past and comes to terms with long-buried secrets.'
'The sheer scope and ambition of this extraordinary novel mesmerises with its lucidity and force of imagination… A superb debut novel by one of the most exciting British Latinx voices of a generation.'
'A love letter to Peru and Latin America as a whole, to the author's ancestors, and to the endless ghosts of the past. This ambitiously crafted book stayed with me long after I finished reading.'
'Rarely has a haunting been so eloquent and arresting, so painterly and polyphonic, demanding urgently to be read.'
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