When Mireille is finally freed, her rocky adjustment harkens to that of the mother in Emma Donoghue’s Room. Perhaps Haiti, too, is a beautiful princess, well-versed in the vagaries of men, still searching for a happily ever after.” -Holly Bass, The New York Times Book Review its complex and fragile moral arrived at through great pain and high cost. Let this be the year of Roxane Gay: you’ll tear through An Untamed State, but ponder it for long after.” -Nolan Feeney, “Roxane Gay’s riveting debut, An Untamed State, captivates from its opening sentence and doesn’t let go. Mireille’s struggle to maintain a sense of self while being denied her freedom produces the novel’s most powerful chapters.” - New Yorker An Untamed State establishes Roxane Gay as a writer of prodigious, arresting talent. It is the story of a willful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places. As her father’s standoff with the kidnappers stretches out into days, Mireille must endure the torments of a man who resents everything she represents.Īn Untamed State is a novel of wealth in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. Held captive by a man who calls himself The Commander, Mireille waits for her father to pay her ransom. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a gang of heavily armed men, in front of her father’s Port-au-Prince estate. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti’s richest sons, she has an adoring husband, a precocious infant son, by all appearances a perfect life. Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. In this debut novel, she delivers a powerful, unflinching story of a Haitian American woman kidnapped for ransom, the privilege that made her a target, and the strength she must draw on to survive. Flavorwire has already dubbed her one of 25 Women Poised to Lead the Culture, and An Untamed State one of their 15 Most Anticipated Books of 2014.

Roxane Gay is a powerful new literary voice whose short stories and essays have earned her an enthusiastic audience.

I won’t ever forget it.” -Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings

“ An Untamed State is breathless, artful, disturbing and original.

An untamed state by roxane gay