From the acclaimed author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
and The Lovers comes a taut, spellbinding literary thriller that
probes the essence and malleability of identity.
In Vendela Vida's taut and mesmerizing novel of ideas, a woman travels
to Casablanca, Morocco, on mysterious business. While checking into her
hotel, the woman is robbed of her wallet and passport--all of her money
and identification. Though the police investigate, the woman senses an
undercurrent of complicity between the hotel staff and the
authorities--she knows she'll never recover her possessions. Stripped of
her identity, she feels burdened by the crime yet strangely liberated by
her sudden freedom to be anyone she chooses.
A chance encounter with a movie producer leads to a job posing as a
stand-in for a well-known film star. The star reels her in deeper,
though, and soon she's inhabiting the actress's skin off set, too--going
deeper into the Casablancan night and further from herself. And so
continues a strange and breathtaking journey full of unexpected turns,
an adventure in which the woman finds herself moving further and further
away from the person she once was.
Told with vibrant, lush detail and a wicked sense of humor, The Diver's
Clothes Lie Empty is part literary mystery, part psychological
thriller--an unforgettable novel that explores free will, power, and a
woman's right to choose not her past, perhaps not her present, but
certainly her future. This is Vendela Vida's most assured and ambitious
novel yet.
