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Table of Contents
About The Book
“Vivid and intriguing...Evokes unresolved family history with subtle heat.” —The New York Times
From National Book Award–winning Elisa Shua Dusapin, a subtle yet powerful portrayal of family, secrets, and silence set against the backdrop of a crumbling house in the French countryside—perfect for readers of Katie Kitamura and Elena Ferrante.
“A bewitching meditation on tenderness and violence, intimacy and estrangement, The Old Fire will transport you to an ancient and wild place, immersing you in its temperatures and rainfalls, its grief and grace and sound and silence. You won’t be the same when you leave it.” —Tess Gunty, National Book Award–winning author of The Rabbit Hutch
Through the window, I can see a light inside.
Agathe leaves New York and returns to her home in the French countryside, after fifteen years away.
She and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all those years, and they carry the weight of their own complicated lives. But now their father has died, and they must confront their childhood home on the outskirts of a country estate ravaged by a nearby fire before it is knocked down. They have nine days to empty it. As the pair clean and sift through a lifetime’s worth of belongings, old memories, and resentments surface.
Tender and tense, haunting and evocative, The Old Fire is Elisa Shua Dusapin’s most personal and moving novel yet. An exploration of time and memory, of family and belonging, it is also a graceful and profound look at the unsaid and the unanswered, the secrets that remain, and whether you can ever really go home again.
“A touching, mysterious novel, imbued with the beauty and strangeness of a fairy tale.” —Aysegül Savas, author of The Anthropologists
“Dusapin has a rare and ferocious gift for pinning the quick, slippery, liveness of feeling to the page: Her talent is a thrill to behold.” —Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
From National Book Award–winning Elisa Shua Dusapin, a subtle yet powerful portrayal of family, secrets, and silence set against the backdrop of a crumbling house in the French countryside—perfect for readers of Katie Kitamura and Elena Ferrante.
“A bewitching meditation on tenderness and violence, intimacy and estrangement, The Old Fire will transport you to an ancient and wild place, immersing you in its temperatures and rainfalls, its grief and grace and sound and silence. You won’t be the same when you leave it.” —Tess Gunty, National Book Award–winning author of The Rabbit Hutch
Through the window, I can see a light inside.
Agathe leaves New York and returns to her home in the French countryside, after fifteen years away.
She and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all those years, and they carry the weight of their own complicated lives. But now their father has died, and they must confront their childhood home on the outskirts of a country estate ravaged by a nearby fire before it is knocked down. They have nine days to empty it. As the pair clean and sift through a lifetime’s worth of belongings, old memories, and resentments surface.
Tender and tense, haunting and evocative, The Old Fire is Elisa Shua Dusapin’s most personal and moving novel yet. An exploration of time and memory, of family and belonging, it is also a graceful and profound look at the unsaid and the unanswered, the secrets that remain, and whether you can ever really go home again.
“A touching, mysterious novel, imbued with the beauty and strangeness of a fairy tale.” —Aysegül Savas, author of The Anthropologists
“Dusapin has a rare and ferocious gift for pinning the quick, slippery, liveness of feeling to the page: Her talent is a thrill to behold.” —Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
Reading Group Guide
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Discussion Questions for Elisa Shua Dusapin’s The Old Fire
1. The idea of communication and our struggle to communicate with one another is a central theme in The Old Fire. How does this play out in the novel?
2. The novel largely takes place on the estate in the French countryside where the two sisters grew up. How does location and setting inform the mood of the book?
3. How does their home and their history impact the sisters’ identities in similar or divergent ways? In what ways do the characters’ pasts influence their present?
4. Many of Dusapin’s works explore the feeling of not truly belonging anywhere. How is this theme expressed in The Old Fire?
5. Consider the role of silence in the novel. When is silence comforting and when is it harmful? Is it isolating or connective in this story? How do the characters communicate beyond spoken language?
6. What do we come to learn about Agathe, the protagonist, and what motivates her? What do we learn about secrets she might hold?
7. How does Dusapin’s style enhance the story being told? Is she building tension or intimacy with the reader through her spare style?
8. What is the meaning of The Old Fire to you? What themes and plot points are illustrated by the title?
9. The Old Fire is translated from French; how does the act of translation inform and affect the story?
10. How does Agathe change – if at all – from the start of the novel, during the week she’s returned to France, to the end of the book? What is her transformation?
1. The idea of communication and our struggle to communicate with one another is a central theme in The Old Fire. How does this play out in the novel?
2. The novel largely takes place on the estate in the French countryside where the two sisters grew up. How does location and setting inform the mood of the book?
3. How does their home and their history impact the sisters’ identities in similar or divergent ways? In what ways do the characters’ pasts influence their present?
4. Many of Dusapin’s works explore the feeling of not truly belonging anywhere. How is this theme expressed in The Old Fire?
5. Consider the role of silence in the novel. When is silence comforting and when is it harmful? Is it isolating or connective in this story? How do the characters communicate beyond spoken language?
6. What do we come to learn about Agathe, the protagonist, and what motivates her? What do we learn about secrets she might hold?
7. How does Dusapin’s style enhance the story being told? Is she building tension or intimacy with the reader through her spare style?
8. What is the meaning of The Old Fire to you? What themes and plot points are illustrated by the title?
9. The Old Fire is translated from French; how does the act of translation inform and affect the story?
10. How does Agathe change – if at all – from the start of the novel, during the week she’s returned to France, to the end of the book? What is her transformation?
About The Author
Romain Guélat - Editions Zoé
Elisa Shua Dusapin was born in France and raised in Paris, Seoul, and Switzerland. Her debut novel Winter in Sokcho was awarded the Prix Robert Walser, the Prix Régine Desforges, and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature, and her books have been translated into thirty-five languages. She lives between Amman and Switzerland.
Product Details
- Publisher: S&S/Summit Books (January 13, 2026)
- Length: 192 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668212219
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Raves and Reviews
"Poignant” —Wall Street Journal
“I began this book late at night, intending to read one chapter, and emerged from its powerful enchantment a few hours later, having accidentally reached the end. A bewitching meditation on tenderness and violence, intimacy and estrangement, The Old Fire will transport you to an ancient and wild place, immersing you in its temperatures and rainfalls, its grief and grace and sound and silence. You won’t be the same when you leave it. A breathtaking achievement from one of my favorite living writers.” —Tess Gunty, National Book Award-winning author of The Rabbit Hutch
"A touching, mysterious novel, imbued with the beauty and strangeness of a fairy tale." —Aysegül Savas, author of The Anthropologists
“The Old Fire traces the silences within a family, alongside the muscle memory of childhood intimacy and our attempts to break through loneliness when words fail us. Elisa Shua Dusapin observes her characters with anthropological curiosity and great sensitivity. Her wisdom will astound you.” —Sanaë Lemoine, author of The Margot Affair
"The spaces left unfilled are what give the text its otherworldly magic." —Grace Linden, LA Review of Books
“Evokes Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels and Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero.” —Michelle Kicherer, Willamette Weekly
“Dusapin is a writer gifted in atmosphere; every image in this slim novel oozes with portent and symbolic weight….A delicate and elegant novel that asks what we owe the ones we love.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Quietly affecting… a beautiful rendering of unresolved adolescence” —Publishers Weekly
"Intriguing and surprising" –Bookpage
“A soulful look at the ties we cannot break no matter how hard we try.” —Booklist
Praise for Winter in Sokcho
"Mysterious, beguiling, and glowing with tender intelligence, Winter in Sokcho is a master class in tension and atmospherics, a study of the delicate, murky filaments of emotion that compose a life. Dusapin has a rare and ferocious gift for pinning the quick, slippery, liveness of feeling to the page: her talent is a thrill to behold." —Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
"Dusapin’s terse sentences are at times staggeringly beautiful, their immediacy sharply and precisely rendered from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins … Oiled with a brooding tension that never dissipates or resolves, Winter in Sokcho is a noirish cold sweat of a book." —The Guardian
Resources and Downloads
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