From the acclaimed author of The End We Start From, The Harpy is the story of a marriage, an affair, and a very particular kind of revenge.

‘Brilliant . . . A deeply unsettling, excellent read’ - Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
'A potent contemporary fable . . . riveting' - Guardian
‘Genuinely thrilling . . . one long beautiful scream’ - Evie Wyld

Lucy lives with her husband Jake and their two boys. Her life is devoted to her children, her days mapped out by their finely tuned routine.

Until a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband. He thought she should know.

Lucy is distraught. She decides to stay with Jake, if only for the children’s sake, but in order to even the score, they agree that she will hurt him three times. Jake will not know when the hurt is coming, or what form it will take. And so begins a delicate game of crime and punishment, from which there is no return . . .

Told in dazzling, musical prose, The Harpy by Megan Hunter is a dark, staggering fairy tale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary. It is a novel of love, marriage and its failures, of power and revenge, of metamorphosis and renewal.

‘Utterly compelling . . . precise and darkly truthful’ Esther Freud

"Megan Hunter’s potent contemporary fable about the enduring taboo of female fury becomes especially relevant. Every bit as riveting as her debut The End We Start From . . . the ensuing drama blends mythic motifs with pointed swipes at modern motherhood’s double binds." - Guardian

"Hunter writes viscerally and incisively about the taboos of female desire and rage . . . [a] striking, pared-down modern myth" - Daily Mail

"A fiery tale of infidelity . . . she manages to elevate her story to something that is at once rooted in the everyday and effortlessly transcends it . . . a gripping, psychologically astute account of a relationship in free-fall" - Scotsman

"On one level it is the psychological excavation of a suburban marriage on the rocks, on another, a spell to summon primeval feminine power. Above all, it is prose informed by poetry . . . a brilliant and eviscerating work of literary fiction" - Review 31

"With shades of Carmen Maria Machado and Karen Russell, Hunter turns in an unforgettable magical realist story of power, revenge, and transformation." - Esquire