Marisa Silver w/ Peter Orner

In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents.

Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and disgust from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no further than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local doctor and freak sideshow proprietor, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates persecution for Pavla. Little Nothing unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as this outcast woman is hunted down and incarcerated for her desires, her body broken and her identity stripped away until her soul is strong enough to transcend all physical bounds.

Woven throughout is the journey of Danilo, the young man entranced by Pavla, obsessed only with protecting her. Part allegory about the shifting nature of being, part subversive fairy tale of love in all its uncanny guises, Marisa Silver’s new novel spans the beginning of a new century, the disintegration of ancient superstitions and the adoption of industry and invention. With a cast of remarkable characters, a wholly shocking and original story, and extraordinary, page-turning prose, it is a work of sheer electricity.

Marisa Silver is the author of the novel Mary Coin, a New York Times bestseller. She is also the author of The God of War(a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist), No Direction Home, and two story collections, Alone With You and Babe in Paradise (a New York Times Notable Book and Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year). Her first short story appeared in The New Yorker when she was featured in the magazine’s first “Debut Fiction” issue. Winner of the O. Henry Prize, Silver’s fiction has been included in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and other anthologies. She lives in Los Angeles.