Parasol Against the Axe: A Novel

by Helen Oyeyemi

Overview

"A shape-shifting novel about the power of stories…Helen Oyeyemi is a literary pied piper — her voice is the kind that readers gamely follow into the most bewildering and unnerving of situations." – The New York Times

“A metatextual masterpiece.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

“Oyeyemi writes here as an heir to Calvino or Borges…A dizzying, dazzling romp.” —Kirkus Reviews

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Peaces and Gingerbread returns with a novel about competitive friendship, the elastic boundaries of storytelling, and the meddling influence of a city called Prague

In Helen Oyeyemi’s joyous new novel, the Czech capital is a living thing—one that can let you in or spit you out.

For reasons of her own, Hero Tojosoa accepts an invitation she was half expected to decline, and finds herself in Prague on a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend Sofie. Little does she know she’s arrived in a city with a penchant for playing tricks on the unsuspecting. A book Hero has brought with her seems to be warping her mind: the text changes depending on when it’s being read and who’s doing the reading, revealing startling new stories of fictional Praguers past and present. Uninvited companions appear at bachelorette activities and at city landmarks, offering opinions, humor, and even a taste of treachery. When a third woman from Hero and Sofie’s past appears unexpectedly, the tensions between the friends’ different accounts of the past reach a new level.

An adventurous, kaleidoscopic novel, Parasol Against the Axe considers the lines between illusion and delusion, fact and interpretation, and weighs the risks of attaching too firmly to the stories of a place, or a person, or a shared history. How much is a tale influenced by its reader, or vice versa? And finally, in a battle between friends, is it better to be the parasol or the axe?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593192351
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/05/2024
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	107,405
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Helen Oyeyemi is the author of the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, which won the PEN Open Book Award, along with seven novels, including Peaces, Gingerbread, and Boy, Snow, Bird, which was a finalist for the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/29/2024

The bold, lucid, and experimental latest from Oyeyemi (Peaces) portrays Prague as a city of dreams and mysteries. The writer Hero Tojosoa, who publishes under the pen name Dorothea Gilman, accepts a last-minute invitation to a bachelorette party in Czechia hosted by two frenemies. She brings with her a copy of Paradoxical Undressing, a novel by mysterious Australian author Merlin Mwenda, which provides a different narrative each time it’s opened (Hero’s copy shifts overnight from a story of a love triangle in the court of King Rudolf III to one of a dyspeptic judge hoping to frame his own son for crimes against the Communist Party). Also in Prague is the real Dorothea Gilman, who has an axe to grind with Hero for using her name. Dorothea winds up with her own copy of Paradoxical Undressing, one that’s set in 1943 and concerns the perilous adventures of a dancer hoping to subvert the Nazi Protectorate from within. By the time Dorothea loses her copy of the Mwenda and tracks down a new one in a bookshop, the novel has changed into a madcap farce about rogue hairdresser Ataraxia “the Uglifier” Pham, who terrorized 2016 Prague by giving clients terrible hairdos. Bizarre doublings and subplots abound as Oyeyemi delightfully channels a Borgesian literary lunacy, revealing the connections between Hero and Dorothea and introducing the real Merlin Mwenda (now working as, of all things, an ersatz ice cream vendor). This is a metatextual masterpiece. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Parasol Against the Axe: 

A New York Times Editor's Choice Pick

“Delightfully weird."—TIME

“An intimate, opulent portrait of Prague.”—The Washington Post

"A shape-shifting novel about the power of stories…Helen Oyeyemi is a literary pied piper — her voice is the kind that readers gamely follow into the most bewildering and unnerving of situations...[H]er stock-in-trade has always been tales at their least domesticated; her concern lies in form and the unruly patterns and peculiarities that allow stories to take on lives of their own." —New York Times Book Review

"Mind-bending. Parasol Against the Axe is a book about a physical place, the stories that make up that place, and the disembodied plane on which those stories and that place meet."—The Atlantic

"Parasol questions the boundaries between fact and fiction, and how the truth itself can change depending on who is telling or it, or where it’s being told."— W Magazine

“Bold, lucid, and experimental. . . Oyeyemi delightfully channels a Borgesian literary lunacy. . . This is a metatextual masterpiece.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

“Oyeyemi writes here as an heir to Calvino or Borges…A dizzying, dazzling romp.” —Kirkus Reviews

"Like so much of Helen Oyeyemi’s acclaimed work, Parasol Against the Axe defies a simple logline—which, of course, is to its credit as an immersive, variegated study of a city and the people within...you’ll want to do all you can not to tear your eyes from the page.”—Elle

“Oyeyemi’s language, along with her ability to drop clues and invite questions without clear answers, makes the reading experience a world unto its own. . .The pleasure of Parasol Against the Axe lies in figuring out what is real and what is imag­ined—and if, in Oyeyemi’s world, the differ­ence even matters.” —BookPage

From the Publisher

01/19/2024

The narrator in Oyeyemi's (Peaces) latest begins with the story of Hero Tojosoa arriving in Prague for an encounter with her old friends and with the damage she inflicted in her past; meanwhile, Hero's former friend arrives in Prague on a mission to deliver long-delayed justice. But the story is told by the genius loci of the city itself, a meddler who can't resist setting up the confrontation while captivating Hero through the means of a mythical, ever-changing book whose first chapter shows a different facet of the city and its history every time its pages are opened, in a seemingly never-ending kaleidoscope of history, mystery, and magic. While Hero's story is one of bad behavior, old friends, regrets, and atonement, the central narrative of Oyeyemi's novel is the story of Prague itself, past and present, might be and never quite was, told as a story within a story, manipulated by a master storyteller. VERDICT Readers of literary fiction, those who love stories whose protagonists are entire cities, and the many fans of the award-winning Oyeyemi will fall in love with the novel's constantly shifting perspectives every bit as much as the author has clearly fallen in love with Prague.—Marlene Harris

Library Journal

Dorje Swallow's performance of this metafiction centers this whirligig of a novel in which story begets story. His assured narration--in particular, his ability to do voices and accents and adapt his tone to whatever the scene--makes this audiobook marvelous to listen to. Hero Tojosoa ostensibly comes to Prague to join her friend, Sofie, for a weekend. When Dorothea Gilmartin arrives as well, the plot thickens, splatters, and all matter of mayhem ensues--including a wedding that the listener learns of before the character herself and a shape-shifting book titled PARADOXICAL UNDRESSING, whose stories change for every reader. The city itself seems to narrate parts. Not to worry, Dorje Swallow's steady delivery takes the listener through the looking glass in fine fettle. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2024 - AudioFile

2023-12-16
A trio of former friends is brought together in Prague in a novel narrated by the city itself.

Hero Tojosoa, a journalist, comes to Prague at the invitation of her old friend, Sofie Cibulkova, who is having her hen weekend there. Though the two are no longer close, Hero is eager to run away from an issue plaguing her at home, one related to a book she has published under the pen name Dorothea Gilmartin. When Hero arrives in Prague on a hot summer day, she brings with her a novel her teen son gave her called Paradoxical Undressing, described as a “crazily tangible unhistory” of Prague. Nearby, Sofie and Hero’s third former friend—also called Dorothea Gilmartin, the kind of surreal linkage Oyeyemi delights in—is in Prague on business, where she, too, is given a copy of Paradoxical Undressing. But though it’s the same book, Thea and Hero aren’t reading the same story; in fact, each time they return to their respective copies, the book has changed content, swooping into different moments of Prague’s history, from the taxi dancers of World War II to physicians in the reign of King Rudolf II. As the mysterious novel’s secrets multiply, Hero, Sofie, and Thea collide in the city with dramatic results. Oyeyemi writes here as an heir to Calvino or Borges, corkscrewing exuberantly through the alleys and roofscapes of her adopted city. (Born in Nigeria and raised in London, Oyeyemi now lives in the Czech capital.) Packing stories inside stories like a hall of mirrors can occasionally make for daunting, and even goofy, reading, but to write a “Prague book,” Oyeyemi seems to say, layers of shape-shifting tales seem necessary to do it justice.

A dizzying, dazzling romp through the intersection of political and personal histories.

Kirkus Reviews