Partita: A Novel

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Demon Copperhead, a story of a brief, passionate, life-changing love affair, wrapped up in what might be the greatest romance of all: our eternal human longing for art and beauty.

Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest livelihood in the farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s kept at bay for a lifetime.

Shifting between past and present, Livia’s decision to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories framed as musical dances, the experiences of childhood loss, abandonment, self-immolating passion, and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief in love and ruptured the course of her life.

With razor-sharp acuity and deep affection, Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver’s unforgettable new novel reflects on class barriers, the risks of ambition, and the timeless, life-changing power of art.

Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and grew up in rural Kentucky. She earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona, and has worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985. At various times she has lived in England, France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia where she currently resides.

Her books, in order of publication, are: The Bean Trees (1988), Homeland (1989), Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike (1989), Animal Dreams (1990), Another America (1992), Pigs in Heaven (1993), High Tide in Tucson (1995), The Poisonwood Bible (1998), Prodigal Summer (2000), Small Wonder (2002), Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands, with photographer Annie Griffiths (2002), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007), The Lacuna (2009), Flight Behavior (2012), Unsheltered (2018), How To Fly (In 10,000 Easy Lessons) (2020), Demon Copperhead (2022), and coauthored with Lily Kingsolver, Coyote's Wild Home (2023). She served as editor for Best American Short Stories 2001.

Kingsolver was named one the most important writers of the 20th Century by Writers Digest, and in 2023 won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel Demon Copperhead. In 2000 she received the National Humanities Medal, our country's highest honor for service through the arts. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have been adopted into the core curriculum in high schools and colleges throughout the nation. Critical acclaim for her work includes multiple awards from the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association, a James Beard award, two-time Oprah Book Club selection, and the national book award of South Africa, among others. She was awarded Britain's prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) for both Demon Copperhead and The Lacuna, making Kingsolver the first author in the history of the prize to win it twice. In 2011, Kingsolver was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She has two daughters, Camille (born in 1987) and Lily (1996). She and her husband, Steven Hopp, live on a farm in southern Appalachia where they raise an extensive vegetable garden and Icelandic sheep.

"A brilliantly prismatic story. . . . Kingsolver is one of the finest living writers, and her latest will join Demon Copperhead and The Poisonwood Bible as another modern classic." - Library Journal (starred review)

"Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature's masters. . . . A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement." - Kirkus (starred review)

"Barbara Kingsolver has done it again. In this masterfully orchestrated novel, an unexpected call forces a once-ascendent pianist to revisit the affair that reshaped her youth and the career that vanished alongside it. . . . Partita refuses easy distinctions between destiny and choice, showing how class background, family damage, and thwarted ambition can keep shaping us long after we believe their power has faded." - Oprah Daily

"Kingsolver presents an enrapturing, brilliantly plotted, deeply personal, and profoundly insightful celebration of the life of the land, the skills and struggles of farmers, and the transcendent power of art to bring us together, make us feel 'more alive,' and make us whole." - Booklist

"An engrossing story. . . . Kingsolver shines in her character work. . . . This tragic story of long-held secrets will keep readers turning pages." - Publishers Weekly (Top 10 Fall Fiction)

“Partita is a Tess of the d’Urbervilles for the 21st century and it is packed with just as much feeling and heart. Without question it’s my novel of the year.” - The Sunday Times

"From the author of the much-loved Demon Copperhead (who doesn’t have this in their top 10 list?) comes a new book that feels like both a continuation and a departure. . . . The story was born out of Kingsolver’s love of both language and classical music; Partita weaves the two together with her usual grace and expert touch with words." - Elle

"Wrestles with the questions that have fueled [Kingsolver's] whole career--namely, who is art for, what makes it good, and what can it actually accomplish?" --The New Yorker

"A virtuosic performance." - The Financial Times

"Moving. . . . Expertly interweaving themes of class and healthcare, Kingsolver grapples with the question of artistic ambition versus family obligation." - Town and Country

"A tour-de-force exploration of music’s power to heal." - Washington Independent Review of Books

"Kingsolver’s magnificent Partita sings in the key of passion, yearning, and loss." - The Boston Globe

"Distinctly elegiac and holistic." - The Los Angeles Times

"A beautiful dual-timeline story." - Woman's World