There’s a new voice on the historical fiction scene as of today: Kathe Koja. Known mainly for her young adult fiction, Koje made her literary debut publishing horror with Bantam Dell. She returns to an adult audience with Under the Poppy, her first book with Small Beer Press. Imaginative, poetic and more than a little bawdy, the book follows the comic/tragic love triangle involving a pair of orphans and the man who runs the brothel where they take shelter.
Fans of authors like Sarah Waters and Michel Faber won’t want to miss this romp set against the bustling backdrop of 1870s Brussels, which Koja describes as a story about “love and faithfulness, what it means to really be true: to a person, a vocation, through tremendous struggle and unavoidable pain. Under the Poppy is at its deepest heart the love story of Rupert and Istvan.” Read the rest of our Q&A with Koja on BookPage.com.
There is no such thing as fidelity unless it has undergone a real test.
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