"A harrowing exploration of the expanding labyrinth of despair and the self." Paul Tremblay.
A mindbending and visceral experimental horror about a young man trapped in an infinite Montreal subway station, perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski and Susanna Clarke.
Vicken has a plan: throw himself into the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and end it all for good, believing it to be the only way out for him after a lifetime of depression and pain. But, stepping off the subway, he finds himself in an endless, looping station.
Determined to find a way out again, he starts to explore the rooms and corridors ahead of him. But no matter how many claustrophobic hallways or vast cathedral-esque rooms he passes through, the exit is nowhere in sight.
The more he explores his strange new prison, the more he becomes convinced that he hasn't been trapped there accidentally, and amongst the shadows and concrete, he comes to realise that he almost certainly is not alone.
A terrifying psychological nightmare from a powerful new voice in horror.
Genre: Horror
A mindbending and visceral experimental horror about a young man trapped in an infinite Montreal subway station, perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski and Susanna Clarke.
Vicken has a plan: throw himself into the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and end it all for good, believing it to be the only way out for him after a lifetime of depression and pain. But, stepping off the subway, he finds himself in an endless, looping station.
Determined to find a way out again, he starts to explore the rooms and corridors ahead of him. But no matter how many claustrophobic hallways or vast cathedral-esque rooms he passes through, the exit is nowhere in sight.
The more he explores his strange new prison, the more he becomes convinced that he hasn't been trapped there accidentally, and amongst the shadows and concrete, he comes to realise that he almost certainly is not alone.
A terrifying psychological nightmare from a powerful new voice in horror.
Genre: Horror
Praise for this book
"Coup de Grace is an eerie, twisty, mind-bendingly enjoyable masterpiece of truly Backroom-sized proportions. Compulsive AF." - Gemma Amor
"To succinctly describe the power of this haunting labyrinth of a book would require a writer of Sofia Ajram's skill--and that's a rare thing indeed. This is the sort of story you read in one day and then think about for a lifetime. It's bigger on the inside." - Nat Cassidy
"The ultimate bummer of publishing is you're asked to compare books to other, similar books and movies in order to help sell them, and while you can do that with Coup de Grace ("It's part Cronenberg, part Danielewski, part Greek myth!") those 'comps' don't really get at how vital and new and achingly now the novella is in its story, its melancholy... and its scares. A true achievement." - Adam Cesare
"Coup de Grace isn't merely absorbing - I feel as if I was digested by this book, dissolving bit by bit with every flip of the page. Sofia Ajram has constructed a stunning mobius strip of a nightmare, equal parts Clive Barker and M.C. Escher, full of fleshy architecture and seductively serpentine prose." - Clay McLeod Chapman
"A slender, terrifying volume in which to lose yourself completely. Sofia Ajram's remarkable debut Coup de Grace is a lyrically written yet shockingly raw depiction of its narrator's descent into the depths of suicidal depression. It is rare that surreal horror bites this deep or tears this hard at the reader's emotions. I was floored. Highly recommended." - David Demchuk
"Alienating, exquisite, and disturbing; a poem in blood and concrete." - Gretchen Felker-Martin
"Sofia uses gorgeous and unsettling prose to trap us in a hellish brutalist concrete labyrinth. Reading Coup de Grace was a wonderful, stressful experience that I'll be thinking about for a long time." - Trevor Henderson
"Coup de Grace is a novella woven with cold elegance like sea breeze drifting from the ocean at night through liminal spaces both seen but felt. It is breaths beckoning from deep within an endless tunnel underground with moments of unexpected humour and absurdity. And it is life, death, and hope's interwoven thoughts in poetry and refreshing experimentalism." - Ai Jiang
"An aching spectacle of bleakness and jewelled prose; Coup de Grace is one hell of a debut for multi-talented Sofia Ajram." - Cassandra Khaw
"The decision, the ride, the beautiful stranger, the end you always knew would find you - Sofia Ajram's Coup de Grace is wholly original and totally, despairingly, passionately alive." - Kathe Koja
"Relentless, terrifying, gorgeous, and perfect; one of the most powerful books I've ever been lost inside. This is a beautiful nightmare built by a genius architect and I'll be shocked if I read anything better all year." - Daniel Kraus
"Intricately woven and often too upsetting to bear, Ajram's debut novella pulsates with a dizzying, almost mystifying energy. You will not feel safe while reading this book. A gift to be savored, a transgression to be endured." - Eric LaRocca
"Sofia Ajram has crafted a dizzying and unsettling story, beautifully navigating the stormy waters that lie between blind hope and clear-eyed despair. Coup de Grace is a gift to anyone who reads it, wrapped neatly in slate gray paper and topped with a Mobius strip bow." - Scott Leeds
"Forwarded with the funereal poetics of dream-logic but, wait: awake. And therefore, no dream, but nightmare. Still, despite the horror, Ajram's spirited voice is as self-evident as a solitary bright hue in a wide grey world. What do we look for in books, in stories, if not signs of life? Coup de Grace is teeming with rare life." - Josh Malerman
"A visceral, hallucinatory meditation on illness, mental and otherwise. I haven't read something with this much resonation since Dazai's No Longer Human. Coup de Grace is a bleak, philosophical look into what it means to be alive, for better or worse, where the only thing scarier than mangled monstrosities is the inexplicable world one is forced to roam simply by breathing. We're all waiting on a train. Some smile on the benches. Some cry on the tracks." - Scott J Moses
"Mind-bendingly tense, Ajram winds the reader through prose that arcs and fizzles with the distraught terror of survival. Coup de Grace was both fun and terrifying -- I'm in awe of the sharp turn of every sentence and how we explore both the map of the novel's world and the map of Vicken's mind." - Elle Nash
"A moving and gorgeously written debut novella, Sofia Ajram's Coup de Grace cycles through vertigo, claustrophobia, existential dread and body horror - and yet it's not without a sense of hope. Immersive and strange, highly recommended." - Christi Nogle
"An ever-expanding labyrinthine nightmare. A maze of memory. A kaleidoscope of caverns and chambers, peering deep into our movements of wake and sleep, guilt and regret and purpose. Coup de Grace is one of the most unique, yet terrifying stories I have ever read, a terror so infinite I feel completely changed having read it." - Cynthia Pelayo
"A stunner. Ajram makes earnest ennui feel like the most natural state of a story. Don't assume you get to just read; you're part of this too." - Hailey Piper
"In this caustic confrontation with the self, Ajram's carefully crafted dread is a hand wrapped around your throat." - Andrew F Sullivan
"Coup de Grace is a harrowing exploration of the expanding labyrinth of despair and the self. Its liminal melancholy will linger. Sofia Ajram is a writer to watch." - Paul Tremblay
"It's become a rare joy to read something in mainstream genre fiction that values opaque dread, atmosphere, and WTF-ness just as much as standard story beats. Sofia Ajram has that kind of gift, with the eloquent prose and forked tongue to match. With irresistible, despairing beauty, Coup de Grace invites you to get hopelessly lost within the labyrinthine mind of a formidable new force in horror." - Michael Wehunt
"The literary equivalent of a high-fever delirium, of picking at a wound, of an acid burn in the back of your throat. Ajram will have your nightmares wrapped around his finger, and you will be reluctant to come up for air." - Andrew Joseph White
"Sofia Ajram's Coup de Grace is a guided tour through the overlap of geographies real and reflected, imaginary and internal. Seductively sardonic, Ajram's narrator invites readers along through the stations of his breakdown, a journey that proves to be as irresistible as it may be inescapable. Doomed but driven, recursive yet revelatory, Coup de Grace compresses and kaleidoscopes, entangles and explodes. It unfolds itself to itself as much as to its readers... and there's nothing else quite like it." - Gordon B White
"Bleak, unrelenting, and surprising at every turn, the torturous inner maze of depression becomes literal in Sofia Ajram's nightmarish vision of an endlessly expanding House of Leaves." - Ally Wilkes
"A truly unsettling and uneasy novella. Ajram perfectly captures a setting that is at once vast and empty, yet confining and claustrophobic, blending the mundane and the fantastical, and exploring horrors that exist both within and outside the human mind. A distinct voice and vision." - A C Wise
"Ajram understands the itch and gnaw of self-annihilation, constructing a labyrinth from its thrum and beckon. Coup de Grace is an abject exploration of life with the lights turned off; a book that gradually loses its mind as it's read." - B R Yeager
"To succinctly describe the power of this haunting labyrinth of a book would require a writer of Sofia Ajram's skill--and that's a rare thing indeed. This is the sort of story you read in one day and then think about for a lifetime. It's bigger on the inside." - Nat Cassidy
"The ultimate bummer of publishing is you're asked to compare books to other, similar books and movies in order to help sell them, and while you can do that with Coup de Grace ("It's part Cronenberg, part Danielewski, part Greek myth!") those 'comps' don't really get at how vital and new and achingly now the novella is in its story, its melancholy... and its scares. A true achievement." - Adam Cesare
"Coup de Grace isn't merely absorbing - I feel as if I was digested by this book, dissolving bit by bit with every flip of the page. Sofia Ajram has constructed a stunning mobius strip of a nightmare, equal parts Clive Barker and M.C. Escher, full of fleshy architecture and seductively serpentine prose." - Clay McLeod Chapman
"A slender, terrifying volume in which to lose yourself completely. Sofia Ajram's remarkable debut Coup de Grace is a lyrically written yet shockingly raw depiction of its narrator's descent into the depths of suicidal depression. It is rare that surreal horror bites this deep or tears this hard at the reader's emotions. I was floored. Highly recommended." - David Demchuk
"Alienating, exquisite, and disturbing; a poem in blood and concrete." - Gretchen Felker-Martin
"Sofia uses gorgeous and unsettling prose to trap us in a hellish brutalist concrete labyrinth. Reading Coup de Grace was a wonderful, stressful experience that I'll be thinking about for a long time." - Trevor Henderson
"Coup de Grace is a novella woven with cold elegance like sea breeze drifting from the ocean at night through liminal spaces both seen but felt. It is breaths beckoning from deep within an endless tunnel underground with moments of unexpected humour and absurdity. And it is life, death, and hope's interwoven thoughts in poetry and refreshing experimentalism." - Ai Jiang
"An aching spectacle of bleakness and jewelled prose; Coup de Grace is one hell of a debut for multi-talented Sofia Ajram." - Cassandra Khaw
"The decision, the ride, the beautiful stranger, the end you always knew would find you - Sofia Ajram's Coup de Grace is wholly original and totally, despairingly, passionately alive." - Kathe Koja
"Relentless, terrifying, gorgeous, and perfect; one of the most powerful books I've ever been lost inside. This is a beautiful nightmare built by a genius architect and I'll be shocked if I read anything better all year." - Daniel Kraus
"Intricately woven and often too upsetting to bear, Ajram's debut novella pulsates with a dizzying, almost mystifying energy. You will not feel safe while reading this book. A gift to be savored, a transgression to be endured." - Eric LaRocca
"Sofia Ajram has crafted a dizzying and unsettling story, beautifully navigating the stormy waters that lie between blind hope and clear-eyed despair. Coup de Grace is a gift to anyone who reads it, wrapped neatly in slate gray paper and topped with a Mobius strip bow." - Scott Leeds
"Forwarded with the funereal poetics of dream-logic but, wait: awake. And therefore, no dream, but nightmare. Still, despite the horror, Ajram's spirited voice is as self-evident as a solitary bright hue in a wide grey world. What do we look for in books, in stories, if not signs of life? Coup de Grace is teeming with rare life." - Josh Malerman
"A visceral, hallucinatory meditation on illness, mental and otherwise. I haven't read something with this much resonation since Dazai's No Longer Human. Coup de Grace is a bleak, philosophical look into what it means to be alive, for better or worse, where the only thing scarier than mangled monstrosities is the inexplicable world one is forced to roam simply by breathing. We're all waiting on a train. Some smile on the benches. Some cry on the tracks." - Scott J Moses
"Mind-bendingly tense, Ajram winds the reader through prose that arcs and fizzles with the distraught terror of survival. Coup de Grace was both fun and terrifying -- I'm in awe of the sharp turn of every sentence and how we explore both the map of the novel's world and the map of Vicken's mind." - Elle Nash
"A moving and gorgeously written debut novella, Sofia Ajram's Coup de Grace cycles through vertigo, claustrophobia, existential dread and body horror - and yet it's not without a sense of hope. Immersive and strange, highly recommended." - Christi Nogle
"An ever-expanding labyrinthine nightmare. A maze of memory. A kaleidoscope of caverns and chambers, peering deep into our movements of wake and sleep, guilt and regret and purpose. Coup de Grace is one of the most unique, yet terrifying stories I have ever read, a terror so infinite I feel completely changed having read it." - Cynthia Pelayo
"A stunner. Ajram makes earnest ennui feel like the most natural state of a story. Don't assume you get to just read; you're part of this too." - Hailey Piper
"In this caustic confrontation with the self, Ajram's carefully crafted dread is a hand wrapped around your throat." - Andrew F Sullivan
"Coup de Grace is a harrowing exploration of the expanding labyrinth of despair and the self. Its liminal melancholy will linger. Sofia Ajram is a writer to watch." - Paul Tremblay
"It's become a rare joy to read something in mainstream genre fiction that values opaque dread, atmosphere, and WTF-ness just as much as standard story beats. Sofia Ajram has that kind of gift, with the eloquent prose and forked tongue to match. With irresistible, despairing beauty, Coup de Grace invites you to get hopelessly lost within the labyrinthine mind of a formidable new force in horror." - Michael Wehunt
"The literary equivalent of a high-fever delirium, of picking at a wound, of an acid burn in the back of your throat. Ajram will have your nightmares wrapped around his finger, and you will be reluctant to come up for air." - Andrew Joseph White
"Sofia Ajram's Coup de Grace is a guided tour through the overlap of geographies real and reflected, imaginary and internal. Seductively sardonic, Ajram's narrator invites readers along through the stations of his breakdown, a journey that proves to be as irresistible as it may be inescapable. Doomed but driven, recursive yet revelatory, Coup de Grace compresses and kaleidoscopes, entangles and explodes. It unfolds itself to itself as much as to its readers... and there's nothing else quite like it." - Gordon B White
"Bleak, unrelenting, and surprising at every turn, the torturous inner maze of depression becomes literal in Sofia Ajram's nightmarish vision of an endlessly expanding House of Leaves." - Ally Wilkes
"A truly unsettling and uneasy novella. Ajram perfectly captures a setting that is at once vast and empty, yet confining and claustrophobic, blending the mundane and the fantastical, and exploring horrors that exist both within and outside the human mind. A distinct voice and vision." - A C Wise
"Ajram understands the itch and gnaw of self-annihilation, constructing a labyrinth from its thrum and beckon. Coup de Grace is an abject exploration of life with the lights turned off; a book that gradually loses its mind as it's read." - B R Yeager
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