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A Poison Apple
A Poison Apple
Nov 13, 2025 10:03 AM

Author:Michel Laub,Daniel Hahn

A Poison Apple

*Selected as one of the Best Books 2017 in the Financial Times*

'One of Brazil’s finest authors offers a meditation on betrayal, guilt, survival and the many ways in which personal and collective histories collide' - Ángel Gurría-Quintana

Is it better to burn out than to fade away? An entrancing novel of loss and regret, from the prizewinning Brazilian novelist Michel Laub.

In this sinuous meditation on passion, youth and guilt, a man looks back over twenty years to his relationship with his first love, Valeria, and its tragic climax..

They both had tickets to Nirvana in 1993, the only gig the band ever played in Brazil. But he was on military service and failed to join her. She was there with his best friend instead. Consumed by insecurities and tricks of memory, he continues to feel, two decades later, that one fateful night has defined his entire adult life.

Entwining this most personal story with seminal events of the 1990s, A Poison Apple circles around and back to some of the biggest questions: what is a life worth? What does it mean to really commit to living? And can we ever break free of the past?

Successor to his prizewinning Diary of the Fall, this is a beautiful and haunting novel that shows Michel Laub at his mesmeric best.

Reviews

It is both timely and gratifying to see one of the country’s outstanding writers come to the attention of an English-language readership

—— Ángel Gurría-Quintana , Financial Times

I read A Poison Apple in two impulsive, impatient sittings... Michel Laub is one of the most intelligent novelists at work south of the equator. If he were north of the equator, he’d be one of the most intelligent novelists there too. I love the minute intricacy of his compositions, and the way they stage such giant traumas.

—— Adam Thirlwell

In this sly and unexpected novel, Laub asks how some thrive in spite of trauma and others fall apart in the face of success.

—— Financial Times

DIARY OF THE FALL: Extraordinary... In my world, this novel is already a classic

—— Karl Ove Knausgaard

DIARY OF THE FALL: A work of immense incantatory power

—— Neel Mukherjee , Literary Review

One of Brazil’s finest authors offers a meditation on betrayal, guilt, survival and the many ways in which personal and collective histories collide.

—— Financial Times, Best Books of 2017

The narrator is. . . a Nick Carraway-type whose apparent detachment eventually collapses to reveal deep emotion. In this sly and unexpected novel, Laub asks how some thrive in spite of trauma and others fall apart in the face of success.

—— Financial Times

Savagely intense and utterly compelling... This is his paciest and cleanest-cut book...few books could better deserve a second chance to find new readers

—— Sunday Times

The Adversary is exactly the idea I have of a modern novel: struggling deftly with facts and with itself

—— Laurent Binet, author of HHhH

An absolutely stunning piece of work, totally involving and unforgettable

—— Evening Standard

This is the sort of story I dreamed of covering when I was a journalist. The sort of story for which the phrase You couldn’t make it up was invented. The Adversary takes a deep, mesmerising dive into the darkness of a human soul. There were moments when I truly could not believe what I was reading. But unlike other serial killer noirs sitting on my shelves, this horror is real. And so much more chilling for that.

—— Fiona Barton, author of The Widow

[A] book that fairly struck me over the head was The Adversary… it’s the coexistence of almost unimaginably variant realities within a family that haunts you.

—— Megan Nolan , New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

A remarkably thoughtful and unnerving book...mesmerising

—— Sunday Telegraph

Profoundly disturbing...a remarkable and undoubtedly important book - perhaps even a necessary one

—— Daily Express

A fascinating meditation on Jean-Claude Romand and what his bizarre life might mean... Carrère's inquiry is highly personal, written in lucid prose...the narrative is often mesmerizing, and revealing about the fragility of human relationships

—— New York Times

As a writer, Carrère is straight berserk; as a storyteller he is so freakishly talented, so unassuming in grace and power that you only realize the hold he's got on you when you attempt to pull away... You say: True crime and Literature? I don't believe it. I say: Believe it

—— Junot Díaz

Justifiably considered the French In Cold Blood

—— Paris Review

The sense of dread he conveys is authentic – it is a loss of self, of connection to the world...dystopian

—— London Review of Books

It’s fascinating, watching Carrere dig around in Romand’s inner life… By the end you feel this clever, intriguing book is too good for its banal human subject.

—— Robbie Millen , The Times

Dark, strange, astonishing.

—— Marcel Theroux , Big Issue

A jaw-dropping tale of murder and deception that goes right to the heart of what it means to be human... The perfect antidote to an excess of sunshine

—— Paul Murray, author of THE BEE STING , Observer, *Summer Reads of 2023*

The perfect antidote to Trump.

—— Sarah Churchwell , Guardian

This book is a compelling study of the relationship between artist and spectator, and how suffering feeds into art, and he’s made of it a bravura performance… Extraordinary.

—— Alastair Mabbott , Herald

A haunting, intense and Man Booker International prize-winning novel from a great writer.

—— Mail on Sunday

Incredibly fast paced, and the dialogue comes at you like a machine gun… It is powerful in its own right.

—— Sara Garland , Nudge

Abrasive, unexpected and eventually heartbreaking, it is a masterclass in characterisation and structure, and it beat off some exceptionally strong competition to win the prize… A Horse Walks into a Bar is quite unlike any other Grossman book except in one important respect: it’s another masterpiece.

—— Nick Barley , New Statesman

Excellent.

—— Dara Ó Briain , Observer

Pitch-perfect black comedy

—— Salman Rushdie , Guardian
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