Ka

By John Crowley, Melody Newcomb (illustrator),

Book cover of Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr

Book description

“Ka is a beautiful, often dreamlike late masterpiece.” —Los Angeles Times

“One of our country’s absolutely finest novelists.” —Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Interior Darkness and Ghost Story

From award-winning author John Crowley comes an exquisite fantasy novel about a man who tells the story of a…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Ka as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Emma Marris

Author

I don’t read very much fiction (although I want to read more!) but I thought it would be interesting to check out some novels where animals are main characters.

I read several, and this is the one I still think about all the time. The main character is a crow and although the book is a fantastical mytho-poetic adventure through time and space, it is also a wonderful exercise in cross-species empathy.

While you are reading, you really feel like you understand what it means to be a crow. It really stuck with me; I found it really rich and…

From Emma's list on what it is like to be a wild animal.

KJ Kabza

Author

The longer you write fiction, the harder it becomes to ignore its mechanics and get swept away in a story.

But KA swept me away and right off a cliff. Mostly known among writers for his novel Little, Big, John Crowley's KA is a shining opus that reflects back humanity's relationship with stories through the eyes of Dar Oakley, a crow whose life, destiny, and very nature becomes entangled with those of the story-telling humans who fascinate him.

KA is a sprawling, slow-burn of a novel, starting with Crowley's detailed portrait of crow culture and morphing into the multi-part…

From KJ's list on starring sentient animals (that not enough people know).