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A Guardian Best Book of 2022 Clever and surprising BuzzFeed Brilliantly funny San Francisco Chronicle IngeniousThe Millions Powerful Harpers Bazaar

A captivating debut novel about a classics professor immersed in research for a new book on a prophecy in the ancient world who confronts chilling questions about her own life just as the pandemic descendsfor readers of Jenny Offill Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney

Covid19 has arrived in London and the entire world quickly succumbs to the surreal chaotic mundanity of screens isolation and the disasters big and small that have plagued recent history As our unnamed narratora classics professor immersed in her studies of ancient propheciesnavigates the tightening grip of lockdown a marriage in crisis and a tenyearold son who seems increasingly unreachable she becomes obsessed with predicting the future Shifting her focus from chiromancy prophecy by palm reading to zoomancy prophecy by animal behavior to oenomancy prophecy by wine she fails to notice the future creeping into the heart of her very own home and when she finally does the threat has already breached the gates

Brainy and ominous imaginative and funny Delphi is a snapshot and a time capsuleit vividly captures our current moment and places our reality in the context of myth Clare Pollard has delivered one of our first great pandemic novels a mesmerizing and richly layered story about how we keep on living in a world that is evermore uncertain and absurd