Biography of X

'Brilliant, astonishing' Chris Kraus
'Sly, brilliant, philosophically acute, bitingly funny, and a pure joy to spend hours with' Lauren Groff
When X - the iconoclastic artist, musician and writer - dies suddenly, CM, her widow, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. The story will lead her deep into the Southern Territory - a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the USA after World War II - before revealing the full weight of X's secrets, and the depth of her betrayal.
'A thriller set against a backdrop of political intrigue, an elegy, an art world satire and a thought experiment too... One of the most interesting books you'll read this year...' Financial Times
'A profound novel about love and what it can license, about the toll - and maybe the con - of genius' Garth Greenwell
'Sprawling and ambitious... Strange and dystopian... This is a major novel' New York Times

Catherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Pew, and Biography of X, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and twice been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists.