There’s a certain trepidation to starting a new book by Karen Russell. If you are familiar with her work, you know that you are about to encounter a vision of some aspect of the world – a place, a time, a person, a phase of life, or way of being – that will haunt you, elegantly and indelibly, perhaps for the rest of your life. It’s a commitment of the self to the vision of the author, who is thankfully brilliant, and who writes like nobody else on the planet.

Surreal storytelling and fantastic language.

A powerful novel.

A storytelling tour de force that lives up to the promise of its name.

It’s an inspired and unforgettable fusion of the gritty and the fantastic.

Russell’s lyrical writing dazzles on every page... Russell’s ambitious and exciting novel, like all good historical fiction, makes a powerful case for never forgetting. Erasure is a form of combat, but so is remembering.

Across the vast canvas of this novel, Russell aims for nothing less than a consideration of the role that intentional amnesia plays in American history and American life. To embark on the adventure of reading THE ANTIDOTE is to place yourself under the enchanting and challenging care of a writer who is guilty of actual witchcraft

Russell’s prose is as sharp as ever. Her capacity for detailed imagery while maintaining an easy, readable pace must be commended. Conceptually, her imagination stands head and shoulders above her peers, which is no surprise to any Karen Russell reader…this book is wholly unique and represents one of the modern greats continuing to challenge herself

A dramatic and uncanny tale of the drastic consequences of our destruction of nature and Indigenous communities.

Consistently true of award-winning Russell’s (Orange World and Other Stories) work, this dystopian book is wholly original, exploring memory, climate politics, and intergenerational trauma from unexpected angles.

THE ANTIDOTE is an important book, reminding us of the power of memory and the dangers of forgetting. Perhaps even more significantly, Karen Russell’s joyful imagination lights up on the page, making this one of this year’s must-reads.

Russell has created both a tender story of how our memories sustain us in the face of significant loss and a frank reckoning with a painful period of American history

Russell is truly one of the greatest writers of our time.

Here in THE ANTIDOTE, Karen Russell has summoned her singular brand of alchemy and created an epic of heart and devastation, community and laughter, death and life. A book that has it all. An absolute wonder.

With THE ANTIDOTE, Karen Russell proves once again that there is no limit to her extraordinary imagination. She creates marvels out of what we imagine to be the ordinary world, she turns the historical novel upside down and shake from it a thing of exquisite beauty that is unlike anything you’ve ever read.

Memory is both the poison and the cure here, something that simultaneously traps and liberates the characters. They move through their world with the weight of what’s unspoken pressing down on them. It’s a novel that asks the reader to sit with discomfort, to walk alongside its characters as they confront their unresolved histories. In the end, it’s not the magical elements that matter most—it’s the emotional truth at the heart of the story, the way Russell pulls you into her characters' psyches, making you feel their burdens as your own because they are your own, even if you don’t know it. Russell navigates these emotional landscapes with care and respect and the distinct gift she carries that is heaven—I mean Love.

The gorgeous language and fantastical premises Karen Russell (Orange World and Other Stories, Swamplandia!) employs are always animated by deep feeling and big ideas. The Antidote (only her second novel!), shares that depth and heft: It opens with the April 1935 “Black Sunday” dust storm enveloping the tiny town of Uz, Nebraska. Uz is home to a prairie witch, known as the Antidote, who possesses the ability to store memories that her neighbors would rather not retain themselves. But when the darkness and terror passes, the Antidote discovers that it has blown away all the memories she’d kept for the townspeople along with their topsoil. Russell unspools a story of holding on to community through hardship that’s also an investigation of what has been omitted from American memory, and how we could reclaim it.

Russell is one of our most spectacular wielders of the surreal, and THE ANTIDOTE is an absolute flex