Swamplandia!
A Pulitzer Prize Finalist
One of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists
Selected for the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40
Nominated for the Orange Prize
Winner of the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award
One of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of 2011
Finalist for the American Library Association’s Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
New York Times bestseller
Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos; her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called The World of Darkness.
As Ava sets out on a mission through the magical swamps to save them all, we are drawn into a lush and bravely imagined debut that takes us to the shimmering edge of reality.
Praise for Swamplandia!
“Absolutely irresistible. . . . A suspenseful, deeply haunted book. . . . A marvel.”
The New York Times
“Audacious, beguiling. . . . Ava’s story turns into a tale that could have been concocted by Flannery O’Connor in partnership with the Brothers Grimm—in other words, a first-class nightmare. . . . You will admire this novel for its prose, but you will love it for its big heart.”
The Daily Beast
"Swamplandia! is both a celebration of the Everglades and an elegy for it. . . . Russell has created a credible, captivating universe."
The Sun Sentinel
“Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride. . . . This family, wrestling with their desires and demons . . . will lodge in the memories of anyone lucky enough to read Swamplandia!”
The New York Times Book Review
