Karina Lickorish Quinn

THE DUST NEVER SETTLES

'I have seen ghosts. They will not rest. The whispers of the past are all around...'

Anaïs Echevarría is returning to Lima to sell her ancestral home, the notorious 'yellow house' that looms over the sprawling capital below, its history woven into the fabric of the city. But concealed within its walls are spectres from the past that demand her attention, the echoing voices of the family who lived in this grand home, and the injustices on which both the country and the house were built. 

In Lima, where elapsed time coats every surface like a layer of fine dust, these ghosts will not rest until the sins of the past are atoned for. And, while Anaïs comes to terms with her history, the present threatens to overwhelm her. Pregnant, nervous and alone, what begins as an uneasy homecoming soon becomes a reckoning with secrets that refuse to stay buried. 

Perfect for fans of Isabel Allende and Kazuo Ishiguro, this hauntingly beautiful debut will seduce, entice and mesmerise. 

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Praise for The Dust Never Settles

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‘A sorcerer walks through these pages weaving time past and time present into a Scheherazadean swirl. This is a mesmerising feat of imagination and a masterful debut.’ 

- Paul Lynch, author of Irish Novel of the Year winner, Grace

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'Captivating and epic in scale, sumptuously imagined, with a wry and generous vision of human frailty, Lickorish Quinn’s magnificent debut enchants from first page to last. This is a novel that takes seriously the claims of history—of colonialism and slavery in particular—tracing their reverberations across the centuries and into the present. It is a work of astonishing empathy and expansiveness, a story that bends spacetime to take us on a journey towards a place and an hour where redemption might prove possible. Working at the intersection of languages and cultures, the global north and the global south, Lickorish Quinn is a breath-taking writer of singular voice.'

- Patrick Flanery, author of Absolution

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'Karina Lickorish Quinn is the new face of magic realism. She has given it, through Anaïs, a female body and soul… She makes it sing, she makes it work and she has built a world that stands on its own three feet. Like its title, The Dust Never Settles will stay floating inside the reader, impossible to forget or unsee.'

- Laia Jufresa, author of Umami

WRITING

NOVELS

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• The Dust Never Settles (Oneworld Publications, forthcoming 2021, UK and Commonwealth)

  • In Spain as ​El Polvo Nunca Se Asienta (Editorial Arde, forthcoming 2022)

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SHORT PROSE

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• 'Breakfast at the Windsor Miramar' inWasafiri (forthcoming, 2021)

• 'Of Magpies and Mockingwords' in Longitudines (July 2020)

• 'OLAMs' in Palabritas (December 2019)

• 'The Walls of Gringo Buckman' in Un Nuevo Sol (Flipped Eye Publishing, December 2019)

• 'Autoptes or An Eye Witness' in Roehampton Roundtable (November 2019)

• 'The Grief of Lupita Ramírez Ospina' in Journal of Latina Critical Feminism (March 2019)

• 'Spanglish' in Asymptote (July 2016)

• 'Oögenesis' short-listed for The White Review short story prize 2016.

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I am represented by Seren Adams at United Agents.

BIO

Karina Lickorish Quinn is a Peruvian-British writer who grew up between the English Midlands, Lima and New York.

Her fiction, essays and translations have been published in diverse literary journals including The Offing, Asymptote, the Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, Palabritas, and Longitudines. She has been short-listed for the White Review's short story prize and her work was featured in Un Nuevo Sol, the first major anthology of British-Latinx writers, published by Flipped Eye (2019). Her debut novel, The Dust Never Settles, will be published by Oneworld (2021).

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In a previous life, Karina was a family law barrister and a secondary school English teacher. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Queen Mary University of London. Karina is now a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds.

CONTACT

I am represented by Seren Adams at United Agents.

If you would like to reach me directly,

please fill in the contact form.