Karro: A Novel

Ferrante meets Kitamura in this taut and sensual contemporary reimagining of Anna Karenina that fearlessly searches for the woman at its heart, while fully transforming the story we thought we knew, from critically acclaimed novelist Jenny Mustard.

On the cusp of her fortieth birthday, Karro has everything: a husband on the rise in London politics, a beautiful son, a luxurious Edwardian home, and money enough to waste her days on literature and the occasional dose of opium. When Karro falls into a consuming affair with a younger American artist, what begins as an awakening soon becomes a scandal, and society’s repercussions are immediate and severe. Karro's desires force her on a desperate pursuit of happiness—one that threatens to unravel not only her sense of self, but her entire existence. 

Moving seamlessly between the high-society circles of London, Stockholm, the Côte d’Azur, and New York,  Karro bravely revisits the age-old concept of the fallen woman and asks what it means to fall from grace today. An impassioned reimagining of Anna Karenina told in a first-person both tender and piercing, Karro is a psychologically astute and searingly honest portrait of a woman collapsing under the weight of motherhood and society's expectations. Like the wolf who chews off her own limb to escape, will Mustard's Karro be able to free herself before it's too late? And in our contemporary age, what shape might that freedom take?