Parasol Against the Axe

Reviews

Praise for Parasol Against the Axe:

One of The BBC's “12 Best Books of 2024 so far”

“Delightfully weird.”
—TIME

“An intimate, opulent portrait of Prague.”
—The Washington Post

"Mind-bending. Parasol Against the Axe is a book about a physical place, the stories that make up that place, and the disembodied plane on which those stories and that place meet."
—The Atlantic

“A shape-shifting novel about the power of stories . . . Helen Oyeyemi is a literary pied piper—her voice is the kind that readers gamely follow into the most bewildering and unnerving of situations. . . . [H]er stock-in-trade has always been tales at their least domesticated; her concern lies in form and the unruly patterns and peculiarities that allow stories to take on lives of their own.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Oyeyemi writes here as an heir to Calvino or Borges. . . . A dizzying, dazzling romp.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A terrific mercurial work. Oyeyemi has mastered the art of bold, expansive storytelling.” 
—Irenosen Okojie

“Bold, lucid, and experimental. . . Oyeyemi delightfully channels a Borgesian literary lunacy . . . This is a metatextual masterpiece.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Like so much of Helen Oyeyemi’s acclaimed work, Parasol Against the Axe defies a simple logline—which, of course, is to its credit as an immersive, variegated study of a city and the people within . . . you’ll want to do all you can not to tear your eyes from the page.”
—Elle

“Oyeyemi’s language, along with her ability to drop clues and invite questions without clear answers, makes the reading experience a world unto its own. . . . The pleasure of Parasol Against the Axe lies in figuring out what is real and what is imag­ined—and if, in Oyeyemi’s world, the differ­ence even matters.” 
—BookPage

“Oyeyemi’s novel takes on a life of its own, gleefully jettisoning convention, and playing fast and loose with both its characters’, and its readers’, expectations. . . . [A] brilliant, baffling, beguiling novel.”
—The Guardian

“The book’s absurd charm is constant. . . . Parasol Against the Axe is a book full of contortions that pokes holes in our preconceptions of narrative.”
—The New Statesman

“[An] exhilarating novel. . . . Oyeyemi confidently captures the feeling of reading, of suspecting . . . that books have a mind of their own and the power to play tricks.”
—Financial Times

“Oyeyemi's vision is vast and enigmatic, carried by sentences so crisp and lithe, this is like nothing you’ve ever read before.
—AnOther Magazine

“[E]lectrifying, experimental writing. . . . dizzyingly delicious prose. . . . This is a defiantly irreverent novel, liquorice-like in its wonder.”
—Big Issue (UK)

“[A] delicate sense of ambiguity and unsteadiness is on display in Parasol Against the Axe. . . . [V]ibrant images and possible symbols dance through Oyeyemi’s prose but refuse stable meanings; her work constantly suggests allegory but does not require it. . . . Trying to tell someone else about it feels like trying to relate the events of a dream.”
—The Nation

Praise for Helen Oyeyemi:

“A writer of sentences so elegant that they gleam.”
—Ali Smith

“A writer we should be delirious to have as a contemporary.”
—Independent Expand reviews