Milk Fed

A scathingly funny, wildly erotic and fiercely imaginative story about food, sex and god from the Women's Prize longlisted author of The Pisces

A STYLIST, INDEPENDENT, THE WEEK AND RED HIGHLIGHT FOR 2021

'Sexy and fun and a little weird ... This riot of carnal pleasure will make you laugh as well as gasp' The Times

'A revelation ... Melissa Broder has produced one of the strangest and sexiest novels of the new year ... Exhilarating' Entertainment Weekly

'A luscious, heartbreaking story of self-discovery through the relentless pursuit of desire. I couldn't get enough of this devastating and extremely sexy book' Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of control by way of obsessive food rituals. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine.

Then Rachel meets Miriam, a young Orthodox Jewish woman intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam - by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family - and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Melissa Broder tells a tale of appetites: of physical hunger, of sexual desire, of spiritual longing. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche - both sacred and profane.

Melissa Broder is the author of the novel The Pisces, the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections, including Last Sext. She has written for The New York Times, Elle.com, VICE, Vogue Italia, and New York magazine's "The Cut." Her poems have appeared in POETRY, The Iowa Review, Tin House, and Guernica, and she is the winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry. She lives in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @SoSadToday and @MelissaBroder and Instagram @RealMelissaBroder.