Young God

Nikki has been thirteen forever. She drives a stolen car up the Carolina hills to her father's trailer with a backpack full of pills. She is determined to make her way into his life. Drug deals, pimp wars, chicken shit, ecstasy.

Soon Nikki learns what's required of her to survive - and to prevail - in this world.

Young God introduces a debut novelist with a startling control of language. Scene by harrowing scene, with flashes of brilliant imagery and terse, tense dialogue, this book brings readers into the lost wilds of America. Just as Nikki fights her way into power among dangerous men, Katherine Faw Morris invades stylistic territory usually dominated by male writers - and demands attention.

Strange and remarkable... A powerful portrait of humanity in the face of everyday atrocity... Likely to leave even the sturdiest stunned -- Eimear McBride Guardian
This book is so clean and dirty. It is charged white space: these pages happen to you and now you're awakening, groping groggily to reconstruct. Get mixed up by it. Enter the single-wide and find some ecstasy with Faw -- Richard Hell, writer and musician (Television, Richard Hell & The Voidoids)
Radical and shocking... The harsh light of the south hammers down as the story unfolds with disorienting swiftness, which lends it a dream-like quality... augmented by a spare lyricism. A remarkable debut -- Peter Carty Financial Times
A stark, seductive coming-of-age tale... 22,000 raw, tense, and poetically incandescent words. Reading it is like having a bottle rocket go off in your hands... An adrenaline rush of a debut Elle
A poetic, grim and beautifully dark novel about backwoods violence and horror recounted in a numbed and laconic voice. Morris writes with splendid economy, chapters short as contes, and plenty of slashing insights on the rough world of throwaway lives and varieties of wrong -- Daniel Woodrell, author Winter's Bone
Terrifying and great. Katherine Faw Morris's style is singular and ferocious and Nikki is one of the toughest, most electrifying, most unforgettable heroines I have ever encountered. This a furious blaze of a book that will rough you up and reorder your sense of the world. Read it -- Laura van den Berg, author The Isle of Youth
A short, sharp, brutal kick to the guts in fictional form - a stripped-back cliff jump of a story, brutally poetic in its minimalist vision of violence and destruction -- Doug Johnstone Big Issue
Like a bullet, like a bolt of lightning, like a speeding car, this debut novel goes faster and harder than anything you're likely to read this year. Welcome to an astonishing talent, and an unforgettable heroine -- Stacey D'Erasmo, author The Art of Intimacy
This is the best first novel I've read since Fight Club... Raw, spare and goddamned poetic, this badass debut will haunt you -- Frank Bill, author Crimes in Southern Indiana
A monstrous, visceral debut... The writing - my God, it just blazes across the page with an unparalleled frenzy... I read this in one frantic go, it is impossible to tear your eyes away from it... Necessary reading The Book Catapult blog
An atomic sourball of literary noir... A great debut from a writer to watch CriminalElement.com
A daredevil thrill -- Hepzibah Anderson Observer
Morris's punchy and unwavering style is absolutely of a piece with her unforgiving environment of post-Palhniuk white-trash girl-power -- Ash Smyth Literary Review
Brutal and wonderful -- Eimear McBride 'Books of the Year' TLS
Young God is the kind of single-sitting read that leaves you haemorrhaging BookSlut blog
Spare [and] piquant.... [with a] taut, concise plot The Millions
You are unlikely to read anything quite like this novel this year. Stark but stunning... it lingers for weeks -- ‘Ones to Watch’ Bookseller
A powerful portrait of humanity in the face of everyday atrocity -- Eimear McBride Guardian
Brutal, uncompromising stuff... [with] its stark, unadorned style and gritty subject matter Herald

KATHERINE FAW MORRIS is a native of northwest North Carolina. She studied at Columbia and currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two pitbulls. Young God is her debut novel.

Nikki has been thirteen forever. She drives a stolen car up the Carolina hills to her father's trailer with a backpack full of pills. She is determined to make her way into his life. Drug deals, pimp wars, chicken shit, ecstasy. Soon Nikki learns what's required of her to survive - and to prevail - in this world. Young God introduces a debut novelist with a startling control of language. Scene by harrowing scene, with flashes of brilliant imagery and terse, tense dialogue, this book brings readers into the lost wilds of America. Just as Nikki fights her way into power among dangerous men, Katherine Faw Morris invades stylistic territory usually dominated by male writers - and demands attention.

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