Ottessa Moshfegh is routinely hailed as one of the most exciting American authors working today. Her award-winning, critically acclaimed books like "Eileen" and "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" contain an ensemble of drunks and dropouts, misfits and murderers, pervs and pill-heads – all of them loners. Her narrators are often angry, amoral and unpleasant and they challenge our assumptions about femininity in uncomfortable ways. More than anything, they're all incredibly human. Her new book "Death in her Hands" has just come out in French, focusing on Vesta, another character at home alone.
Ottessa Moshfegh speaks to Eve Jackson about being the unofficial laureate of lockdown because of her ongoing theme of confinement, writing about our less attractive bodily functions and our post-pandemic obsession with dogs.