The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee

This is the world Lilliet Berne inhabits in Alexander Chee’s long-awaited novel, The Queen of the Night, a world soon threatened after Lilliet has fought so hard to enter it. Dresses, as Lilliet has learned, can even start wars. She’s a global phenomenon, a pop diva times ten, and the wrong dress can end a career. Blessed and cursed as a rare Falcon soprano, she fascinates and perplexes the Paris tabloids with her every move, rumor, and certainly every costume she adorns. The year is 1882 and Lilliet is perhaps the most popular opera singer in the world. But she happens to be more concerned about her ill-fitting dress than the crowd, and with good reason. Utterly engrossing.The Queen of the Night fittingly opens with opera singer Lilliet Berne at the height of her storied career, cheered by the masses as she enters an extravagant ball at Luxembourg Palace. Fox'Īn astonishing universe into which its lucky readers can dissolve completely * Karen Russell, New York Times best-selling author of 'Swamplandia' and 'Vampires in the Lemon Grove' * It sounds like opera * New Yorker *Ī night at an opera you'll wish never-ending - Helen Oyeyemi, author of 'Boy, Snow, Bird' and 'Mr. Sprawling, soaring, bawdy and plotted like a fine embroidery * National Public Radio * A moving meditation on the transformative power of fate, art, time, and sheer survival * Publishers Weekly * I loved this novel - Roxane GayĪn epic novel, brilliantly extravagant * Vogue * From its heroine's first entrance, The Queen of the Night grabbed me and kept me rapt as it writhed and contorted its way through love and murder, courtesans and empresses, fates and curses * Financial Times *Ī masterfully written book.

of creativity, ingenuity, endurance, mastery and grace * New York Times *Ī more impressive, richly imagined novel I have not read in many years. One doesn't so much read The Queen of the Night as one is bewitched by it - Hanya Yanagihara, author of the Man Booker shortlisted 'A Little Life'Ī wild opera of a novel and the perfect summer read: swift, smart, immersive and gorgeous * Guardian *Ī celebration.

The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee