AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2022 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2021 Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times , The Washington Post , TIME , NPR, The Financial Times , Good Housekeeping , Esquire , Vulture, Marie Claire , Vox, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and more! “A relentless exhibition of Groff’s freakish talent. In just over 250 pages, she gives us a character study to rival Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell .” – USA Today “An electric reimagining . . . feminist, sensual . . . unforgettable.” – O, The Oprah Magazine “Thrilling and heartbreaking.” – Time Magazine “[A] page-by-page pleasure as we soar with her.” –New York Times One of our best American writers, and a uthor of the highly anticipated THE VASTER WILDS,  Lauren Groff returns with this exhilarating and groundbreaking novel Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be bulwark enough? Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff’s new novel, her first since Fates and Furies , is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world. Praise for Matrix : “A radiant novel about the 12th-century poet and mystic Marie de France. . . Groff richly imagines Marie's decades of exile in a royal convent, which she eventually leads. A charged novel about female ambition.” - Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air “Just when it seems there are nothing but chronicles of decline and ruin comes Lauren Groff’s Matrix , about a self-sufficient abbey of 12th-century nuns—a shining, all-female utopian community…  it is finally its spirit of celebration that gives this novel its many moments of beauty.” - Wall Street Journal "[T]hrilling and heartbreaking. Groff. . . crafts an electric work of historical fiction." - TIME “[A] page-by-page pleasure as we soar with her. ” - New York Times Book Review “Far more than a treat for history buffs. . . . [Groff] writes a creative, intelligent work that will last.” – Boston Globe "Incandescent. . . a radiant work of imagination and accomplishment." - Esquire “In Lauren Groff’s hands, the tale of a medieval nunnery is must-read fiction." -The Washington Post “Stunning . . .grand, mythic . . .feels both ancient and urgent, as holy as it is deeply human.”- Entertainment Weekly “An electric reimagining . . . feminist, sensual . . . unforgettable.” – O, The Oprah Magazine “An inspiring novel that truly demonstrates the power women wield, regardless of the era. It has sisterhood, love, war, sex …[Q]uite impossible to put down.” - NPR “A relentless exhibition of Groff’s freakish talent. In just over 250 pages, she gives us a character study to rival Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell or Robert Caro’s Robert Moses.”– USA Today "The medieval nun drama you didn’t know you needed." - Vulture “A bold new direction for the accomplished writer.” - Vogue “[I]n an appealingly unpredictable move, Lauren Groff has turned her attentions to 12th-century English nuns. The result is a highly distinctive novel of great vigour and boldness ... we are carried on the force of her style, and held by the strength of an intelligence that lets comedy and emotional complexity work together ... an assertively modern novel about leadership, ambition and enterprise, and about the communal life of individuals.” - The Guardian "Transcendently beautiful … It’s surprisingly delicious to read fiction about a historical figure we know so little about.” - Shondaland “A propulsive, enchanting, and emotionally charged read.” - Washington Independent Review of Books “A mesmerizing study of faith, passion and violence.” - Harper's Bazaar “Sumptuous, sublime . . engrossing.”- Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Expansive . . . .