The blazing world

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZEWINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTION'Dazzling' Sunday Times'A truly wonderful intellectual work that makes you think and laugh' Daily Mail'Playful, ebullient, brainy' Financial TimesThe artist Harriet Burden, furious at the lack of attention paid her by the New York art world, conducts an experiment: she hides her identity behind three male fronts in a series of exhibitions.

Their success seems to prove her point, but there's a sting in the tail - when she unmasks herself, not everyone believes her.

Then her last collaborator meets a bizarre end. In this mesmerising tour de force, Burden's story emerges after her death through a variety of sources, including her (not entirely reliable) journals and the testimonies of her children, lover and a dear friend.

Each account is different, however, and the mysteries multiply. 'A novel that gloriously lives up to its title, one blazing with energy and thought' The TimesPRAISE FOR SIRI HUSTVEDT:'Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer of high intelligence, profound sensuality and a less easily definable capacity for which the only word I can find is wisdom' Salman Rushdie'One of our finest novelists' Oliver Sacks'Reading a Hustvedt novel is like consuming the best of David Lynch' Financial Times'Few contemporary writers are as satisfying and stimulating to read as Siri Hustvedt' Washington Post'A 21st-century Virginia Woolf' Literary Review