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In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and scorn from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no farther than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local charlatan, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates of persecution for Pavla. Little Nothing unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as an outcast girl becomes a hunted woman whose ultimate survival depends on the most startling transfiguration of them all. Woven throughout is the journey of Danilo, the young man entranced by Pavla, obsessed only with protecting her. Part allegory about the shifting nature of being, part subversive fairy tale of love in all its uncanny guises, Little Nothing spans the beginning of a new century, the disintegration of ancient superstitions, and the adoption of industry and invention. With a cast of remarkable characters, a wholly original story, and extraordinary, page-turning prose, Marisa Silver delivers a novel of sheer electricity.



About the Author

Marisa Silver

Marisa is the author of the novel LITTLE NOTHING, published in September, 2016. Her other novels include MARY COIN, a New York Times Bestseller and winner of the Southern California Independent Bookseller's Award. THE GOD OF WAR, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction, and NO DIRECTION HOME. Her first collection of short stories, BABE IN PARADISE, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. When her second collection, ALONE WITH YOU, was published, The New York Times called her "one of California's most celebrated contemporary writers." Silver made her fiction debut in The New Yorker when she was featured in that magazine's first "Debut Fiction" issue. Her fiction has been included in The Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize Stories, as well as other anthologies.



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