The Blindfold - Softcover

'Sexy without being steamy, intelligent without being complicated' * New Statesman * A work of dizzying intensity ... an intriguing and sure-handed debut by a writer of eloquent and vivid disposition * Don DeLillo * A harsh, dark, dangerous piece of prose...Sharply readable, quirky and entertaining in its witty observation of student and city life, but the whole resonates with shocking force * Vogue * 'Hustvedt has pulled off nothing less than a re-mapping of the modern feminist psyche...The quality and spareness of her prose, the intensity of her imagination, are at work on one of the most macabre terrains of the 20th century - New York' * Daily Telegraph * Brilliant...A dark, mesmerising debut * Independent on Sunday * It has vivid and compelling characters; it is scary, sinister and readable ... a very smart novel * Independent * Gripping...A complex exploration of the nature of the self, executed in polished and immediate prose * The Times *

Iris Vegan, a graduate student living alone and impoverished in New York, encounters four strong characters who fascinate and in different ways subordinate her: an inscrutable urban recluse who employs her to record the possessions of a murdered woman; a photographer whose eerie portrait of Iris takes on a life of its own; an old woman in hospital who tries to claim a remnant of the ailing Iris; and a professor she has an affair with. An exploration of female identity in an age when the old definitions - as some man's daughter/wife/mother - no longer apply, fuelled with eroticism and a sense of menace.