From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia, an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception.

US National Book Awards Longlist 2015

"With Fates and Furies Lauren Groff goes many levels below the surface of a marriage, into a place that is perhaps as hard to reach as it is to describe, but Groff, a bold and marvellous writer, is able to do both. Because she's so vitally talented line for line and passage for passage, and because her ideas about the ways in which two people can live together and live inside each other, or fall away from each other, or betray each other, feel foundationally sound and true, Fates and Furies becomes a book to submit to, and be knocked out by, as I certainly was." -- Meg Wolitzer, New York Times bestselling author of The Interestings "In a swirling miasma of language, plot, and Greek mythology, Groff weaves a fierce and gripping tale of true love gone asunder...Groff's prose is variously dewy, defiant, salacious, and bleak - a hurricane of words thrown together on every page. Yet so much of the power in this book lies in what's unspoken...It's an intoxicating elixir." Publishers Weekly (starred review) "An absorbing story of a modern marriage framed in Greek mythology. Groff's sharply drawn portrait of a marriage begins on a cold Maine beach, with newlyweds "on their knees, now, though the sand was rough and hurt. It didn't matter. They were reduced to mouths and hands." This opener ushers in an ambitious, knowing novel besotted with sex - in a kaleidoscope of variety - much more abundant than the commune-dwellers got up to in Groff's luminous Arcadia (2012). The story centers first on Lancelot "Lotto" Satterwhite, a dashing actor at Vassar, who marries his classmate, flounders, then becomes a famous playwright. Lotto's name evokes the lottery - and the Fates, as his half of the book is titled. His wife, the imperial and striking Mathilde, takes over the second section, Furies, astir with grief and revenge. The plotting is exquisite, and the sentences hum; Groff writes with a pleasurable, bantering vividness ... An intricate plot, perfect title, and a harrowing look at the tie that binds." Kirkus (starred review) "Like a classic tragedy, Groff's novel offers high drama, hubris, and epic love, complete with Greek chorus-like asides. A singular and compelling literary read, populated with extraordinary characters; highly recommended." Library Journal (starred review)

Lauren Groff is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Monsters of Templeton, the short story collection Delicate Edible Birds and Arcadia. She has won Pushcart and PEN/O. Henry prizes and has been shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers. Her stories have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, the Atlantic, One Story, and Ploughshares, and have been anthologised in Best American Short Stories 2007 and 2010, and Best New American Voices 2008. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and two sons.