The death-throes of a colonial world captured in dark, obsessive prose, punctuated by images of strange, surreal beauty. One thinks at times of both Coetzee and Gordimer, but Kitamura is very much her own writer
Salman Rushdie Beautifully observed ... the cumulative effect of this shocking, desperate book is something that approaches magnificent
FT
Kitamura is in ... Read morecomplete control, both of the prose and of the story it carries. She is a skilled hunter and we are her helpless prey
Teju Cole
Open City
A stark, urgent, beautiful novel. The characters and images continue to haunt me, a tribute to their lasting emotional power and their creator's extraordinary gifts
Siri Hustvedt, author of 'The Summer Without Men' A ruthless, controlled style distinguishes this novel ... [Kitamura's] style reminds one of Marguerite Duras and Herta Muller - power is the subject, and the execution is precise
The Daily Beast
A mesmerizing novel, one whose force builds inexorably as its story unfolds in daring, unexpected strokes. Kitamura's prose brings to mind Cormac McCarthy or Jean Rhys, but the music of these lines is all her own - lyrical, sharp-edged, spare, and unafraid. Be warned: you'll find yourself reading long past midnight, out of breath and wide awake. This is a bold and powerful book.
Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge I have been in a daze ever since I finished this book. Gone to the Forest is superb. It is so beautifully written, so balanced - there isn't a spare sentence or word in the whole thing ... Utterly distinctive. Kitamura is one of the best living writers I've read, and she gives the dead ones a run for their money.
Evie Wyld, author of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice Hemingway's returned to life - and this time, he's a woman
Tom McCarthy, author of C, Remainder and Men in Space A relentless fever dream, each perfectly pared paragraph urging you on to the next
Ed Park, author of Personal Days There is nothing better on earth, fictive or not, than What Goes Wrong on the Plantation, and in Gone to the Forest it goes totally and splendidly wrong.
Padgett Powell Evokes a Conradian Heart of Darkness portentousness . . . flashes of unexpected beauty . . . Like the intricate ingenuity of the floating farm flush with the golden fish, Gone to the Forest, in just 200 pages, floats, unfolds and astonishes.
Marie Myung-Ok Lee
San Francisco Chronicle
In a restrained voice Ms. Kitamura offers echoes of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, coolly chronicling the family's undoing as it tracks against the political turmoil ripping through the nation.
Susannah Meadows
New York Times
Gone to the Forest is Katie Kitamura's second novel, about a family and the cost of European colonization in an unknown time and place... that recalls, at first and most often, J.M. Coetzee's South Africa. Kitamura writes with fine tension and clipped grace. Her observations are subtle and sharp. The volcano's importance in the story evokes Aime Cesaire's poem Corps Perdu, which begins, Moi, qui Krakatoa . . . and is a soaring command, in the wake of decolonization, for the islands to be. [She is a] rising literary star.
Samantha Kuok Leese
Spectator
Striking . . . Beautifully written . . . Kitamura's carefully wrought characters are captivating.
Hyphen Magazine
In this wondrous tale of both a family and a country's dissolution, Kitamura brings readers into an unspecified time in an unnamed colonial country . . . Kitamura, with spare, mesmerizing prose, paints a memorable vision of emotional chaos echoed by geologic and political turmoil. [Starred review]
Publishers Weekly
Kitamura's words are tough, and her characters are tied to the tails of wounded beasts: mother countries, the land itself, and hierarchies both out of steam and out of date . . . Kitamura makes the end of history - many histories - seem both casual and immediate.
Sasha Frere-Jones
NewYorker.com
A rising literary star ... Gone to the Forest is darkly seductive'
Aimee Farrell
Vogue
Rendered in a stripped-back eerily simple prose... reads like Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy... It's horrible and beautiful and pretty much a class act all round
Stuart Hammond
Dazed and Confused
Redolent of J.M. Coetzee and Joseph Conrad, this is not a novel that lets you go easily, even after you reach the end.
Hephzibah Anderson
Daily Mail
Beautifully written, with the pace of a thriller, this is a dark, twisted gem
Delphine Chui
Easy Living
Haunting and hypnotic... stunningly wrought... an intelligent, unforgettable novel
Psychologies
There is much to admire in this ambitious piece of fiction
Sarah Hall
Guardian
A stunningly dark story
Lena de Casparis
Company
Wonderfully evocative... by the end I was hooked and harrowed in equal measure. Gone to the Forest starts off very quietly but delivers a cracking great wallop at the end.
Simon Savidge
We Love this Book
Thirty-three-year-old Katie Kitamura writes about raging, ageing men better than most raging, ageing men do themselves... Gone to the Forest is bold for many reasons: not only for the cultural, sexual, historical and national boundaries that Kitamura steps over to get into the minds of her characters. But also for the way she explores the cruelty of colonisation - whether it's of homelands, or of women's bodies - within a hauntingly beautiful, startlingly brief story of an old man dying.
Chris Cox
Observer
Written in stripped-down prose, the whole has a mythic resonance that leaves a deep impression in the mind... in Gone to the Forest: as the rebels rise and a volcano explodes, Kitamura is dedicated to giving us a thrilling snapshot of tensions boiling over, and of the world, falling to pieces .
Philip Womack
Daily Telegraph
A pressure cooker of a book ... An allegorical novel of almost unnerving starkness
Alastair Mabbott
Glasgow Herald
A novel of Steinbeckian characters living in a land of Biblical harshness described with a contemporary fast-and-looseness at a dizzying pace ... Otherworldly ... Strange, seductive, transporting.
Monocle
When a nearby volcano erupts, so do filial, sexual and political tensions, which Kitamura relates in cool, clipped reportage. The minimal context is frustratingly claustrophobic, but the effect is mesmerising. We discover a fable-like tale, restricted in relevance to no specific history or peoples, that condemns neither colonisers nor the colonised but rather those who fail to attempt understanding. This is sparse, dark, elegant prose that startles with its subtlety and sharp insight.
Kathleen Harris
Irish Times
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