Obreht's third novel (after Inland) is an enthralling story set in fictional Island City. After years of moving from place to place, Silvia and her mother join Sil's aunt Ena in the titular apartment building and quickly join the superintendent and custodial staff. Their landing is not happenstance. They are part of a questionable repopulation program meant to bring residents back to a city that coastal flooding has nearly overtaken. Through Sil, Obreht explores how a child's curiosity, fueled by secrets, mysteries, and superstitions that her aunt's stories only heighten, can lead to obsession. The object of Sil's focus is Bezi Duras, the penthouse resident, an artist who walks her dogs daily. Sil intends to discover the artist's true identity as well as the true nature of her three canine companions. Might they be supernatural? When Mila, another new resident who befriends Sil, discovers Sil's fascination, she doesn't just join the adventure, she more or less takes over. VERDICT Obreht draws upon plausible dystopian and postapocalyptic futures and strong elements from Serbian folktales, as well as magical realism. The result is a strange, almost dreamlike novel, distinctive for its memorable characters and beautiful writing.--Faye A. Chadwell

Silvia, a tall, worried, intrepid 11-year-old, and her wiry, pragmatic, reticent mother, climate refugees, finally reach waterlogged Island City and the Morningside, a luxury apartment building that, like everything on this near-future Earth, has seen better days. The superintendent is Silvia's Aunt Ena, who tells heart-stopping stories of the lost old country and the family Silvia knows nothing about, since her intractable mother insists on keeping their past secret. Silvia soon becomes obsessed with Bezi Duras, the mysterious woman who lives in the penthouse with her enormous dogs, convinced that she is a Vila, "a spirit of the mountain" with epic powers. As in her previous richly imagined and profoundly insightful novels, Tiger's Wife (2011) and Inland (2019), Obreht writes at the crossroads of myth and history, but here with a twist as she envisions a catastrophic tomorrow in which rampaging forces of nature and human atrocities intensify in impact and scope. Silvia's narration is a marvel of evolving perception under duress as she navigates the "world beneath the world" and a "cosmos of dangers." With fairy-tale eeriness, a man with a staggering backstory running a pirate radio station, Silvia's mother's treacherous work as a salvage diver in the city's flooded towers and, finally, her harrowing revelations, this is a bewitchingly atmospheric, psychologically lush, and deeply knowing tale of ancient sorrows and coalescing crises, courage and fortitude.

The author of Inland (2019) and The Tiger's Wife (2011) takes a glimpse into the future. Looking back on her life, a narrator called Silvia remembers emigrating to an island city (that might once have been New York) and moving into the Morningside with her mother. This apartment building is barely clinging to its former grandeur, but Sil and her mother count themselves lucky to be the beneficiaries of a program designed to repopulate a once-great metropolis that has been devastated by floods. Sil's aunt Ena is the superintendent of the Morningside, and Ena not only tells Sil more than her mother wants her to know about their family's past, but she also says just enough about the mysterious resident of the building's penthouse to make Sil suspect that this woman is a Vila--a powerful, often vengeful, nature spirit from their homeland. As she did in her first novel, Obreht uses folklore as a tool for navigating war and displacement. Sil knows how the heroine in a fairy tale should behave but, when she suspects that she might be a fairy tale heroine, she does not want to be that girl. Sil is, as it turns out, an excellent guide to a world in which old rules don't make sense. She's skeptical and credulous and reticent by turns, but she also has instincts for self-preservation that maybe only the most vulnerable among us can understand. Obreht is offering a cautionary vision of what our future might look like, but she's also asking questions that are as old as storytelling. What do we want to tell ourselves about ourselves? What do we try to hide from ourselves? And what's the cost of our lives? A captivating blend of science fiction and magical realism with a wonderfully engaging protagonist. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The striking if scattered latest from Obreht (The Tiger's Wife) expands on a short story included in the New York Times Magazine's Decameron Project, a 2020 anthology of Covid-19-related writing. The narrative is set in a near future where flooding has reshaped the coastal regions of the United States. In Island City, which bears a strong resemblance to New York, 11-year-old Silvia and her mother arrive from abroad to live with Silvia's aunt Ena in the Morningside, a once-luxurious apartment building that Ena now manages. Silvia and her mother, who fled their war-torn homeland (referred to only as "Back Home") years ago, have been brought over as part of a "repopulation" program to ensure people continue to inhabit Island City. At the Morningside, Silvia becomes obsessed with the mysterious Bezi Duras, an artist from Back Home who lives in the penthouse apartment with her three huge hounds, and is drawn by a young neighbor named Mila into dangerous nighttime excursions across the city. The plot arcs somewhat haphazardly between myth and reality, and the tone is a slippery mix of YA and literary fiction. Still, Obreht skillfully crafts this alternate world through Silvia's determined efforts to make sense of both her present and her past, and adds deft touches of horror and magic along the way. Readers will once again be beguiled by Obreht's lyrical imagination. Agent: Seth Fishman, Gernert Co. (Mar.)