Matrix by Lauren Groff

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2021

NAMED ONE OF HIS FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2021 BY FORMER AMERICAN PRESIDENT, BARACK OBAMA

Born from a long line of female warriors and crusaders, yet too coarse for courtly life, Marie de France is cast from the royal court and sent to Angleterre to take up her new duty as the prioress of an impoverished abbey.

Lauren Groff's modern masterpiece is about the establishment of a female utopia.

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.

At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be bulwark enough?

 ‘A propulsive, captivating read’ - BRIT BENNETT

‘Fascinating, beguiling, vivid’ - MARIAN KEYES

‘A dazzlingly clever tale’ - THE TIMES

‘A thrillingly vivid, adventurous story about women and power that will blow readers’ minds.Left me gasping’ - EMMA DONOGHUE