The First Book of Calamity Leek

Wonderfully strange. - Mark Haddon, author of THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

Mark Haddon, author of THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

This hypnotic debut novel - one of the hottest reads of the year - is no ordinary book. It combines pitch-perfect teen angst with a fantastical setting and premise; as much a hymn to reading as a gripping story.

Deeply perplexing . . . as hints of the reality behind the fantasy start to emerge, the story develops its own peculiar and intense momentum.

A fantastic novel, and a really exciting and engaging new voice. The fact that the reader has to work hard to understand this world makes it all the more compelling, and it packs quite an emotional punch when we realise what's going on. I couldn't put it down, and loved the voice of Calamity, and her vulnerability and reliance on her world, while the reader could see it cracking wide open, was heartbreaking.

This is a clever, highly original and complex coming-of-age story. Lichtarowicz deserves praise for fearless inventiveness and the zest of her fast-paced writing

Like a mash-up of Margaret Atwood and Roald Dahl . . . once picked up it’s hard to put down

This is an utterly original, intriguing and intense book which thrills the reader with its story and language. This is the start of a stunning career. Paula L is to be congratulated hugely - I am sent about 20 books a week, so many of them simply copying what has gone before, or following very obvious trends, and it's so good to encounter real individuality and freshness and an identifiable, strong, creative voice.

Paula Lichtarowicz lives in London and works in television production. This is her first novel.

Brilliantly inventive and original. This debut novel tells the story of Calamity Leek: a girl who has never been allowed beyond the garden wall, until now. 
 
Lying in her hospital bed, broken, burned and scared, Calamity still believes that Aunty loved her. For as long as she can remember, Calamity, along with her sixteen sisters, lived in a Garden behind the Wall of Safekeeping. Like it said in Aunty's Appendix on the first page of the Ps: 'Everything has a purpose', and they were being trained for a very special one. In the Ns the Appendix said, 'Nosiness leads to nonsense'. As Calamity sees it, this is what led to their Garden's downfall, because when the sisters started questioning what was outside the Wall, they started questioning what was happening inside it too. 
 
But doubt is contagious. 
Watching your world crumble is frightening. 
And people who are frightened can be dangerous.

Paula Lichtarowicz

It doesn’t take much to tip the world into chaos. You don’t even have to mean to do it. You might be an honest family man; a police chief in a small town in Central Vietnam, say, with no desire whatsoever to unleash catastrophe. A man such as Chief Duong, with simple dreams of domestic happiness and future immortality by means of a small statue on a roundabout. 
 
But the problem with dreams is it’s often hard to look ahead. To see that borrowing money for your daughter’s marriage to a local bigwig will lead to the kidnap of a footballer from Scunthorpe, the downfall of a global soft drinks empire, incidents of attempted matricide, public murder, re-arranged marriage, hypnotic malpractice, and one unfortunate act of geriatric perversion. And that’s not to mention what happens to the town’s monkeys. 
 
Because every action has a consequence. 
 
And were she asked Mrs Duong could consult her astrological charts and tell her husband exactly that. 
 
But it’s not just the chief who needs telling. There’s roving British blogger, J C Bone, with an illegal marriage contract on his hands, and Global Human Resource Manager, Sherry-Sioux with a celebrity surveillance programme to keep under wraps. There’s a chief superintendent with lucrative investment plans and a physician with trail-blazing psychological ambitions. And then there’s Chief Duong’s freedom-fighting children. 
 
You see the biggest problem with chaos is that once it’s unleashed, everyone’s involved. 
 
And once everyone’s involved, how on earth is one little police chief ever going to put things right?

Paula Lichtarowicz

Books by Paula Lichtarowicz

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