Parade
Parade won the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize.
Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down.
In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street.
A mother dies. A man falls to his death. Couples seek escape in distant lands.
The new novel from one of the most distinctive writers of the age, Parade sets loose a carousel of lives. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot, to tell a true story—about art, family, morality, gender, and how we compose ourselves.
About the author
Rachel Cusk is the author of the Outline trilogy, the memoirs A Life’s Work and Aftermath, and several other works of fiction and non-fiction. She is a Guggenheim fellow. She lives in Paris.
Judge Sara Baume on Parade
"Every sentence in Parade seems to grapple with an idea. People die, perspective shifts, scenery changes, and yet there remains a clear, sharp line of thought that holds the reader.
"In effortlessly beautiful prose Cusk challenges the conventions of the novel form as well as addressing the relationship between literature and visual art, and of how each can exist alongside the ordinariness of life.
"Parade is a ferociously illuminating novel that embraces the exquisite cruelty of the world at this present moment."