From Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich comes a richly layered novel that explores identity, exploitation, and how the burdens of history still shape our lives today.

'Louise Erdrich is my favourite writer . . . No one is better than Erdrich at creating an entire world and all the people who live there, past, present and future' Ann Patchett, Evening Standard



'Louise Erdrich is the rarest kind of writer, as compassionate as she is sharp-sighted' Anne Tyler


A wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage and of a woman's relentless errors.

Tookie works as a bookseller in a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis. When the store's most annoying customer dies on All Souls' Day, her ghost simply refuses to leave the store. Tookie, who landed the job after being released from years of wrongful incarceration, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022
PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

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In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage and of a woman's relentless errors.

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading 'with murderous attention,' must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

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'Erdrich is one of the greatest living American writers' Guardian

'Strange, enchanting and funny: a work about motherhood, doom, regret and the magic - dark, benevolent and every shade in between - of words on paper' New York Times

'The poet laureate of the contemporary Native American experience' Mail on Sunday