An “Anti-fantasy”? Otessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona
A spoiler-free review of this puzzling, controversial novel
Published in
5 min readFeb 25, 2024
How to best describe Lapvona, the latest novel by Otessa Moshfegh, author of , , the short story collection , and the novella ? An effort to show the unvarnished reality of the middle ages, with all the gore and grime of the times? A grimdark fantasy tuned to the extreme? A Game of Thrones on steroids? Or a black comedy masquerading as a medieval romance or a chivalric epic?
The novel, Moshfegh’s third, defies interpretation and does not fit neatly within the author’s catalogue. Whereas her other fiction was firmly anchored in the present, Lapvona is set in the past.
The action centres around the eponymous fiefdom of Lapvona, Kingdom being too grand a word, sometime in the Middle Ages, somewhere in Eastern Europe, with hints of the Balkans. The whole novel takes place over a year, subdivided into four chapters, one per season, with a second “Spring” as the epilogue.The medieval setting is not in the least romanticised, to put it mildly. No dragon-slaying knights in shining armour or fair princesses are to be found here. The scale is small. We mostly get to explore the village, the manor house above it, and the countryside…
