"It's rare you'll have read a book quite like All Flesh . It's a true horror story - but instead of the usual ghosts and suspense, it provides a mirror that reflects our societal prejudices back to us. (That's the real horror.) It follows a 16-year-old girl born with an insatiable hunger, overfed by her father and subjected to constant torment by her peers. Ananda's absorbing narrative been described as 'repugnantly beautiful prose', which captures it perfectly - and Jeffery's masterful English translation hooks you from the beginning. A poignant - and often disturbing - reflection on beauty, belonging, obesity and recognition, that will repel and draw you in, all at the same time." -- Service95 "A brutally honest portrayal of a teenager's battles with her body and the way others view it, boldly dismantling society's damaging obsession with image and beauty . [With] a climax that tips into true body horror, All Flesh is a novel that many will find difficult, but for reasons that make the truths within its pages all the more vital to face.
" --Callum McLaughlin, Bookbrowse "Sensual and provocative . the narrative hurtles through a series of striking twists, driven in part by the pesky inner voice of the narrator's twin sister. An epigraph from Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer sets the carnal and gleefully filthy tone, and Devi never lets up. The reader won't be able to look away from this singular work." -- Publishers Weekly , starred review "Caught between shame and fetishization, [the narrator] struggles to imagine a self not defined by the shape of her body. Excavating the moral fantasies we build around bodies, desire, and gender, All Flesh asks where the line is drawn between being self-possessed and self-destructive." -- Linnea Gradin, Electric Literature "An elegant, feverish work of psychological literary horror. All Flesh is an absolute masterpiece of repugnantly beautiful prose.
" --Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb "The ghost twin is a brilliant metaphor for the sense that so many women and girls have that their true self is thin and perfect while their actual body is a cruel lie." --Kirkus Reviews "Devi excels at denouncing the tyranny of image worship, simultaneously obsessed with perfection and fascinated by monstrosity." -- Le Temps "Devi offers a metaphor for a society gorged on superfluities . where no one is safe from the gaze of the other." --Valérie Marin La Meslée, Le Point "A sustained act of craft, from first page to last, for a story that is universal but violent . Monstrous, but perfect." -- Le Soir "A clear-eyed and dark sense of humor. Ananda Devi refuses to be labeled or confined to the categories and canons of postcolonial literature.
" --Nicolas Weill, L e Monde.