Little Nothing

In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and scorn from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no farther than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local charlatan, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates of persecution for Pavla.

Part allegory about the shifting nature of being, part subversive fairy tale of love in all its uncanny guises, Little Nothing unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as an outcast girl becomes a hunted woman whose ultimate survival depends on the most startling transfiguration of them all.

‘In Little Nothing, Marisa Silver doesn’t waver…she delivers a tale as mysterious as anything the Grimm Brothers might have collected…Little Nothing celebrates not only the unruly and lost parts of all our lives but also the possibility of their reordering and comprehension.’ Los Angeles Times

‘Marisa Silver’s fantastically inventive new novel counters expectations at every turn….The novel’s open ending lingers unsettlingly in the mind….Silver manages to transform the fairy tale without losing its power.’ Washington Post

‘A parable and a full-fledged, richly told story, with clearly drawn characters who beckon us to come along with them on their journeys…Silver shows us her capacity for fleet-footed writing.’ Huffington Post

‘An emotionally suspenseful allegory, the novel reveals how the world’s expectations can torque a woman’s identity and leave a ferocious ache behind. The novel twisted me up inside. I loved it.’ Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies

‘Little Nothing is the key to its own box, which opens and opens, transcending the limits of the very tale one thought one was reading…This book is a beautifully realized riddle.’ Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers