From the acclaimed author of Miss Burma , longlisted for the National Book Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, comes an immersive and searing story of two women, their marriages, and the rivalry between them Tessa is a successful writer who develops a friendship, first by correspondence and then in person, with Charlie, a ruggedly handsome philosopher and scholar based in Los Angeles. Sparks fly as they exchange ideas about Camus and masculine desire, and their intellectual connection promises more—but there are obstacles to this burgeoning relationship. While Tessa’s husband Milton enjoys Charlie’s company on his visits to the East Coast, Charlie’s wife Wah is a different case, and she proves to be both adversary and conundrum to Tessa. Wah’s traditional femininity and subservience to her husband strike Tessa as weaknesses, and she scoffs at the sacrifices Wah makes as adoptive mother to a Burmese girl, Htet, once homeless on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. But Wah has a kind of power too, especially over Charlie, and the conflict between the two women leads to a martini-fueled declaration by Tessa that Wah is “an insult to womankind.” As Tessa is forced to deal with the consequences of her outburst and considers how much she is limited by her own perceptions, she wonders if Wah is really as weak as she has seemed, or if she might have a different kind of strength altogether. Compassionate and thought-provoking, My Nemesis is a brilliant story of seduction, envy, and the ways we publicly define and privately deceive ourselves today. Praise for My Nemesis : Named a Most Anticipated Book by Literary Hub and Electric Literature “A breakthrough tour de force. Many have tried to give us an unreliable narrator; few have succeeded as well as Craig does . . . Tessa is a brilliant cross between the autobiographical fiction of Rachel Cusk and the untrustworthy narrator Charles Kinbote in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire . Her narration is revealing and not; her pomposity is porous, funny.”— Carolyn Kellogg, Boston Globe “Much of the power of this excitingly barbed book is Craig’s complex portrait of a woman for whom rage is the default. A gin-drenched Valkyrie, Tessa weaponises her feminism with cruel aggression . . . Craig has swapped the more lyrical, meandering prose of Miss Burma for a crisper style that carries a distinctly Cuskian chill. Tessa’s tone is confessional but unapologetic, and the prose propulsive but pared back. What begins as a cautionary tale warning of the dangers of that bone-chilling phrase ‘my feminism’—and just to be clear: my emphasis is on the first word—morphs into a much more multi-faceted and challenging story of the destruction of the lives of everyone involved.”— Lucy Scholes, Financial Times “Taut, bristling and psychologically profound . . . Slimmer, punchier and more tightly wound, My Nemesis highlights [Craig’s] talent for capturing the minutiae of interpersonal drama.”— Economist “For fans of Siri Hustvedt and Claire Messud, Craig’s third novel, My Nemesis , is the spiky little feminist page-turner you’ve been waiting for . . . The feminism of the novel is interestingly complex and layered, since Tessa’s personal version of it is questioned rather than endorsed . . . Craig deals her narrative tricks with a sure hand.”— Marion Winik, Minneapolis Star Tribune “A study of power dynamics and the roles individuals play in greater systems . . . Tessa is a Camus-obsessed misanthrope who has a thorny relationship with her daughter and a penchant for poking figurative bears, and yet in Craig’s hands she’s a mesmerizing narrator—even as she gets things wrong again and again.”— Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair “The book explores what it means to be feminine, a feminist, how we perceive these qualities, and how much our identities and beliefs define us. This book is short, sharp, philosophical, and dramatic. It’s insightful and uncomfortable.”— Condé Nast Traveler “Tessa, the narrator, is uneasily compelling, her flagrant unreliability adding intrigue to a plot in which discourse around race, motherhood and marriage becomes highly combustible.”— Guardian “A tense psychological thriller probing hot-button topics of race, class, and motherhood.”— Daily Mail (UK) “Written by the outrageously talented Charmaine Craig, My Nemesis tells the stories of two women, their marriages and their deceptions. Brilliantly speaking to themes of gender, friendship, loyalty, perception and identity, this one will have you thinking.”— Ms. Magazine “There are shades of Rachel Cusk and even Elena Ferrante in Craig’s tense, cerebral but elegant third novel about a successful married writer, Tessa, who reaches out by correspondence to an LA-based scholar to bond over Camus. But as the relationship deepens, pulling Tessa’s husband into its orbit, Tessa finds herself in a power struggle with the prof’s seemingly docile half-Asian wife—that ‘seemingly’ takes us to some unexpected places.”— Globe and Mail “