Anyone who thinks today's world is bad has never been to Lapvona.

The village in Ottessa Moshfegh's novel of the same name lies somewhere between a north full of blond, obedient people and a relaxed south by the sea. The names of the Lapvoners are reminiscent of Eastern Europe, the scenery of a late medieval video game, but Lapvona can mainly be summed up in one word characterize: cruelty.

From the very first pages of this book, a gang of robbers is slaughtering a Lapvon family, whereupon the villagers catch one of the robbers, beat him up, mutilate him, throw dung on him, and then, after letting him suffer for a few days, execute him.

Marek, a thirteen-year-old boy who is so “ugly and crooked” that his father hardly likes to look at him, witnesses the gruesome spectacle.

In general, this father, the shepherd Jew, has nothing but contempt for his son.

He beats the boy half to death shortly after the execution for dropping a bucket.

Marek thinks that's great, because "Pain was good, Marek thought.

They showed him his father's love and compassion.” In any case, the boy is constantly looking for affection, because his mother Agata died in childbirth.

At least that's what Jude tells him at the beginning of the novel, of course in all the gory details.

Even though the actual plot hasn't even started here, it's already making you sick.

Because Ottessa Moshfegh has an extraordinary talent for describing physical conditions so tangibly that you believe you can feel them yourself.

It just gets to be too much for one with this talent when the author focuses on cruelty on such a scale.

Because it's no less brutal.

One day this Marek meets Jacob, the local prince's son, and finds his fancy shoes a little too fancy, so he has him fall off a cliff in some kind of accidental murder.

This is followed not only by a detailed description of the disfigured child's corpse, but with this death the plot of the novel begins: a whole year of role reversal in Lapvona,

Laconic intonation, physical borderline states

This is entertaining, especially at the beginning, when the surprising twists still amaze, the lies still frighten and Moshfegh's dry humor makes you laugh despite the violence.

The daughter of a Jewish Iranian and a Croatian mother, born in the USA in 1981, is known for this specific mixture of laconic intonation and the description of physical borderline states and human abysses.

Her protagonists are often misfits, funny, smart and badass, such as the prison clerk with an alcoholic father and a strong self-loathing from the 2015 novel Eileen, for which Moshfegh received a PEN/Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize .

Or the protagonist from "My Year of Peace and Relaxation" published in 2018, who believes

In "Lapvona" Moshfegh shifts from the earlier first-person narrators to a new, omniscient narrative perspective - unfortunately increasingly exaggerating what previously characterized her.

The "freaks" from their previous novels increase here to the ensemble of a tiring horror theater.

All are so depraved, malicious and also just plain stupid that it becomes arbitrary.