The Memory Theater

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • One of Buzzfeed’s 21 Fantasy Books to Get Excited About This Winter • One of Tor’s 30 Most Anticipated SFF Books of The Year

“The Memory Theater is exquisite and astonishing. The prose has a sculpted precision, every sentence both tense as a watch spring and serene as a mountain. Tidbeck skips from horror to wonder to humor like a stone skimming water, and is equally nimble in managing characters; each one steps onto the page fully formed no matter how minor the role.”
—Amal El-Mohtar, The New York Times

“Blending fairy-tale atmosphere with ‘the real world,’ Karin Tidbeck’s The Memory Theater is lovely, dark, and hopeful all at the same time.”  
—Ann Leckie, author of the Imperial Radch Trilogy and The Raven Tower

“At once arrestingly strange and hauntingly familiar, The Memory Theater is a brand new fairy tale you can almost remember hearing before.”
—Lara Elena Donnelly, author of the Amberlough Dossier 

“The Memory Theater is a wonder, sparkling with magic and menace. Karin Tidbeck has written a taut, engrossing fable about identity, time and home that wanders through worlds that lie hidden beyond the veil of our own.”
—Shawn Vestal, author of Daredevils

“Karin Tidbeck is one of the finest writers of fantastic fiction in the world. The Memory Theater is as intricate and as gorgeous as a Swiss watch, only this watch comes from the realm of the Fae. Tidbeck’s second novel is beguiling, terrifying, and hugely compassionate. A cause for celebration.” 
—Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters and Wounds
 
“Inventive, surreal, at times violent, [The Memory Theater] has a timeless, durable quality . . . The Memory Theater maintains a kind of gentleness and fascination with the world—childlike and serious at once . . . a strange and ultimately quite delightful tale.”
—Jake Casella Brookins, Chicago Review of Books

“Wonderful . . . [The Memory Theater], boasting no translator, is [Karin Tidbeck’s] own coinage, and it shows a level of unassuming but beautiful prose which many a native speaker might envy . . . Taken all in all, this sophomore novel from Tidbeck is a remarkable accomplishment, full of eerie magic, human pathos, and mystical urgings. I suspect the Memory Theater troupe is applauding themselves for introducing this book to our reality.”
—Paul Di Filippo, Locus

“[The Memory Theater] left me grateful for the experience of reading . . . Rich, multiversal, all-encompassing . . . A nesting doll of interconnected worlds and lives, a kaleidoscopic reflection of our reality, made magical and strange.”
—Molly Templeton, Tor

“The Memory Theater is as inventive and eerie as Swedish author Karin Tidbeck’s previous works, though more fantastical and fairytale-like.” 
—Buzzfeed, “21 Fantasy Books to Get Excited About This Winter”
 
“The Memory Theater is a truly immersive experience, and absolutely blew my mind.” 
—Tor, “The 30 Most Anticipated SFF Books of 2021”

“A dark, new fairy tale about the haves and the have-nots.” 
—K.W. Colyard, Bustle

“Sharp and glittering. . . . Tidbeck [creates] a world where love, cruelty, and wonder all exist side by side. Highly recommended for fans of Tanith Lee, Michael Moorcock, or Mervyn Peake.”
—Booklist, starred review

“Expansive and wildly imaginative . . . Tidbeck straddles fantasy, coming-of-age drama, and horror with an exciting, sometimes wrenching tale of friendship and time travel . . . This fast-paced fantasy will please fans of quest stories who don’t mind a bit of darkness.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Strange and unique . . . A dark fairy tale that snakes through the multiverse.”
—Kirkus