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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Annelie Geissler |
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THE FALLING MARIA
A LYRICAL, MULTILAYERED AND SHOCKING TALE FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF MYSTERIOUS FRAGRANCE OF THE YELLOW MOUNTAINS
What happens when a woman refuses to conform to the expectations of her gender? In 1920, Maria Mandapat, veteran female WWI fighter pilot and international celebrity, is tried and executed for serial murder, for exacting revenge on her male abusers. But at the very moment the noose tightens, her soul continues its journey, slipping right through her stockings and out the soles of her shoes. She finds herself seated on a trainto Heaven.
The afterlife is unlike any Heaven Maria imagined. It is a dreary bureaucracy little distinguishable from Earth's, populated by busybody angels, well-meaning but ineffectual saints, and the listless dregs of souls waiting in futility for promised salvation. Maria, a controversial figure in death and in life, is quickly put on trialbut this time, St. Adelaide of Rome, patron saint of abused women, has taken a personal interest in Maria's case, because her heavenly trial is not for the crime of murder, but for a much graver sin.
The Falling Maria explores motherhood and freedom, and the tensions between dirtiness and holiness, right and wrong, disobedience and survival, and the lives of the forgotten. It serves as a meditation on suffering and the bonds between mothers and daughters, as well as the many meanings of falling: falling from God, from grace, through the air, into death, and toward a form of holiness and liberation.
YASUKO THANH's story collection Floating Like the Dead 2012) was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award and the B.C. Book Prize for Fiction. One story in it won an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Short Story. The title story won the Journey Prize for the best story published in Canada in 2009. Quill and Quire named Floating like the Dead a best book of the year. Her debut novel Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains, inspired by the history of her father's family in French Indochina, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Prize for the best novel of 2016, and her memoir, Mistakes to Run With, was a national bestseller. Her latest novel, To the Bridge, made the Audible Best of 2023 list.
The afterlife is unlike any Heaven Maria imagined. It is a dreary bureaucracy little distinguishable from Earth's, populated by busybody angels, well-meaning but ineffectual saints, and the listless dregs of souls waiting in futility for promised salvation. Maria, a controversial figure in death and in life, is quickly put on trialbut this time, St. Adelaide of Rome, patron saint of abused women, has taken a personal interest in Maria's case, because her heavenly trial is not for the crime of murder, but for a much graver sin.
The Falling Maria explores motherhood and freedom, and the tensions between dirtiness and holiness, right and wrong, disobedience and survival, and the lives of the forgotten. It serves as a meditation on suffering and the bonds between mothers and daughters, as well as the many meanings of falling: falling from God, from grace, through the air, into death, and toward a form of holiness and liberation.
YASUKO THANH's story collection Floating Like the Dead 2012) was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award and the B.C. Book Prize for Fiction. One story in it won an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Short Story. The title story won the Journey Prize for the best story published in Canada in 2009. Quill and Quire named Floating like the Dead a best book of the year. Her debut novel Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains, inspired by the history of her father's family in French Indochina, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Prize for the best novel of 2016, and her memoir, Mistakes to Run With, was a national bestseller. Her latest novel, To the Bridge, made the Audible Best of 2023 list.
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Published by Hamish Hamilton |