A blisteringly funny and remarkably tender debut novel from Olivia Laing, one of the finest non-fiction writers of her generation.

'I couldn't put it down' – Sally Rooney, author of Normal People

Kathy is a writer. Kathy is getting married. It’s the summer of 2017 and the whole world is falling apart.

Kathy spends the first summer of her forties trying to adjust to making a lifelong commitment – marriage. But it’s not only Kathy who is changing. Political, social and natural landscapes are all in peril. Fascism is on the rise, truth is dead, the planet is hotting up. Is it really worth learning to love when the end of the world is nigh? And how do you make art, let alone a life, when it could all end at any moment?

From a Tuscan hotel for the super-rich to a politically-paralysed UK, Olivia Laing's first novel is a love letter, inspired by the life and work of Kathy Acker. It is a blistering rewire of the form and a brilliant, funny and emphatically raw account of love in the apocalypse.

'[Crudo] will blow you away' – Deborah Levy, author of Hot Milk

Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the Goldsmith's Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize