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Cursed Bread

bySophie Mackintosh, Genevieve Gaunt (Read by)

Longlisted for the Women’s Prize

Brought to you by Penguin.

From the Booker-nominated author of The Water Cure and Blue Ticket comes a chilling new feminist fable, based on the true story of an unsolved historical mystery...

If you eat the bread, you'll die, he said. The statement made no sense, but it filled me with an electric dread.

Elodie is the baker's wife. A plain, unremarkable person, largely ignored by her husband and everyone else, she burns with the secret hunger to be extraordinary, to be desired, to be seen. One day a charismatic new couple appear in town - the ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet - and Elodie quickly falls under their spell. All summer long she stalks them through the shining streets: inviting herself into their home, trying to decipher their coded conversations, longing to possess them at any cost.

Meanwhile, beneath the tranquil surface of daily life, strange things are happening. Six horses are found dead in a sun-drenched field, laid out neatly on the ground like an offering. Widows see their lost husbands walking up the river in the night, coming back to claim them. A teenage boy throws himself into the bonfire at the midsummer feast. A dark intoxication is spreading through the town, and when Elodie finally understands her role in it, it will be too late to stop.

Audacious and mesmerising, Cursed Bread is a fevered confession, an entry into memory's hall of mirrors, a fable of obsession and transformation. Sophie Mackintosh spins a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by hysteria, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

Praise for Sophie Mackintosh:

'Be sure to read everything Sophie Mackintosh writes' Deborah Levy on Blue Ticket

'An extraordinary debut - otherworldly, luminous, precise' Guardian on The Water Cure

'Dreamlike, tense, compelling, with a pitch-perfect ending' The New York Times on Blue Ticket

'An unsettling dark fantasy... It lingers long after the final page' Daily Telegraph on The Water Cure

'Blue Ticket will worm its way under your skin and haunt your dreams' Red

©2023 Sophie Mackintosh (P)2023 Penguin Audio

A shimmering fever-dream of a novel, teasing the reader [..] while finding a fresh narrative framework for the relationship between monotonous small-town life and repressed female desire. Cursed Bread contains more riches than many a novel twice its length

Telegraph

About Sophie Mackintosh

Sophie Mackintosh is the author of four novels, including The Water Cure and Cursed Bread. She has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Women's Prize, has won a Betty Trask Award, and has been selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. She has been published in Granta, The White Review and TANK magazine among others. Her new novel, Permanence, will be published in April 2026.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780241998816
  • Length: 321 minutes
  • Price: £14.00
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