The English Understand Wool (Storybook ND Series)

"Brilliant and inimitable Helen DeWitt: patron saint of anyone in the world who has to deal with the crap of those in power who do a terrible job with their power, and who make those who are under their power utterly miserable."―Sheila Heti, lectric Literature

"DeWitt has plenty of stories to tell about mercenary literary agents, feckless editors and the systematically thwarted ambitions of artists. Her brilliant new novella,The English Understand Wool, is such a saga. Told, like her previous novels, from the point of view of an obsessive personality, this clever little book revolves around the education of seventeen-year-old Marguerite by her French mother on the rules of bon ton. DeWitt has a knack for delivering acutely eccentric ideas with such intense frequency and in a no-nonsense tone that readers become almost persuaded of their unarguable logic."―Spectator World

"This crisp novella, the latest from Helen DeWitt, is told in a series of hostile letters between the girl and her crass American editor in New York. "―Vulture"In Helen DeWitt’s new novelette,The English Understand Wool...depictions of provincial life, aesthetic value, in the hands of those who cannot recognize it, finds itself at the mercy of market logic."―Jared Marcel Pollen,Gawker

"Prose as sharp as Maman's tailored clothes."―Connor Harrison, Literary Review (UK)

"The English Understand Wool is Helen DeWitt’s best and funniest book so far - quite a feat given the standards set by the rest of her work. It is a heist story, an ethica; treatise, a send-up of media culture, a defence of education and an indelibly memorable character portrait. Its pages are rife with wicked pleasures. It incites and rewards re-reading."―Heather Cass White,The Times Literary Supplement

"DeWitt’s mastery of adverbs is deserving of worship."―Molly Young,The New York Times

"Weighing in at just 64 pages, Helen DeWitt’sThe English Understand Woolis a delight."―Mia Levitin,The Irish Times

"I didn’t want the book to end."―Kaitlin Phillips,Artforum

"That a ghost writer should commute her story – that of a ‘missing child’ raised outside the culture she was born into by imposters – to the kind of neutered copy the masses expect is quite out of the question. I am who I tell you I am, DeWitt seems to be saying, and I will speak for myself in the language of my choosing."―J.W. McCormack, The New Left Review

"DeWitt is the sort of writer to whom engineering – the right mark in the right place, getting the message through – matters as much as exposition."―David Trotter, London Review of Books

"A midsummer’s night dream, a turbulent and amoral comedy, disrupting the sleep with its dodges and masks―altogether a delight."―Jon Domini, The Brooklyn Rail

"Readers of Helen DeWitt’s limited previous output―two novels and a collection of stories in twenty-two years―will fall greedily on anything new. Her novellaThe English Understand Woolexceeds expectations."―John Self,The Critic

"A staggeringly intelligent examination into the nature of truth, love, respect, beauty and trust… This is that rare thing, or merle blanc, as maman might say: a perfect book. I’ve read it four times, which you can do between breakfast and lunch."―Nicola Shulman, The Times Literary Supplement

DeWitt is the sort of writer to whom engineering – the right mark in the right place, getting the message through – matters as much as exposition.

—David Trotter,London Review of Books

Helen DeWitt was born in a suburb of Washington, DC. Daughter of American diplomats, she grew up mainly in Latin America, living in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador. She went to Oxford to study classics for a BA and D.Phil. She left academia to try to write a novel, moving eventually to London and acquiring UK citizenship. She had some 100 fragments of novels when she began work in 1995 on the novel that was published asThe Last Samuraiin 2000. The book caused a sensation at the Frankfurt Bookfair 1999, going on to be translated in 20 languages (DeWitt reads some 15 languages to various degrees of fluency). On the reissue ofThe Last Samuraiby New Directions in 2016 it was hailed byVulture Magazineas The Best Book of the Century. She is also the author ofLightning Rods, a Mel Brooksian satire on sexual harassment, andSome Trick, a collection of stories. She has been based in Berlin since 2004, but also spends time at a cottage in the woods of Vermont improving her chainsaw skills.