MONSTRUM : LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE PB – LOTTIE MILLS

* From the winner of the BBC Young Writers Award 2020 * What does it mean to be different in a world that values perfection, at any cost? Lottie s writing is a superb flight of the imagination A.S. Byatt, author of Possession Haunting, luridly beautiful, and at times shockingly, deliciously gruesome’ Jenn Ashworth, author of Ghosted A Best Book for May 2024 according to Cosmopolitan From Lottie Mills, the winner of the BBC Young Writers Award in 2020, comes this beautifully crafted collection of stories. A father and daughter build a life for themselves on an isolated beach. But the outside world is pressing in. It s only a matter of time before their secret refuge is discovered. A young disabled woman opts to receive a perfect, pain-free body. Soon, however, she finds herself haunted by the one she cast off. A travelling circus master discovers the ideal addition to his cabinet of curiosities: damaged , grotesque , gifted. He plans to make her the star of his show; she plans to take her revenge. Monstrum captures the experience of characters excluded by a society that cannot accept their difference. Eerie, fantastical and hugely ambitious, this collection announces the arrival of an outstanding new literary voice. Lottie s stories reminded me of what matters Claire Oshetsky Magical and haunting Jan Carson