Supplication: A Novel

"Astonishing." -Claudia Dey, author of Daughter.

A hallucinatory horror novel set deeply in the consciousness of a woman exploring a changed and frightening world.

Our protagonist comes to in a basement, tied to a chair, with a man looming over her. But someone has a knife. 

We follow her as she emerges from captivity into an unnamed, nightmarish city, seeking some meaning to her new reality. As figures emerge from the night, some offering sanctuary, and others judgement,  she keeps moving, making her way through this fever dream of a narrative. SUPPLICATION is a haunting, embodied tale of alienation, fear, and the quest for respite.

Nour Abi-Nakhoul is a writer, editor, and researcher from Toronto, currently based in Montreal. Her reporting, opinions, criticism, and content have appeared in a variety of Canadian and American publications.

ISBN: 9780771006074
Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: May 07, 2024

“Supplication is a blood-and-guts horror novel mixed with a deeply lyrical narrator. It is about withholding, control, and the malleability of desire.”

—Thea McLachlan, Xtra Magazine

“Full of foreboding and committed to depicting the extremes of interiority and the stinging incursions of the world into the self, Supplication evokes the work of Poe Sadeq Hedayat while remaining alien and new.”

—Naben Ruthnum, author of The Grimmer

“What an astonishing, indelible, and courageous book. I have never read anything like it. It entered my bloodstream. It takes every risk. Supplication is about the states of transformation women must endure and survive––every trial, loss, ascension, surrender, inhabitation is written so completely in its animal radiance, sensuality, and horror; the page can hardly hold the prose. The voice never breaks. Nour Abi-Nakhoul is a beautiful writer, conveying a hellscape, her sentences as direct as they are prismatic. So transforming, compulsive, and original.”