Ottessa Moshfegh has established herself as a master of the uncomfortable with works like My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, Homesick for Another World, and Eileen. In her latest novel, Lapvona, she transports readers to a medieval setting while maintaining her signature unflinching gaze into the darkest corners of human experience. Set in a medieval fiefdom plagued by drought, famine, and cruelty, Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh follows the twisted journey of Marek, a deformed shepherd boy whose life becomes entangled with the corrupt lord of the land, creating a spiral of violence, depravity, and unexpected power shifts.
The novel represents Moshfegh’s most ambitious work yet, expanding her canvas from the claustrophobic interior spaces of her previous works to an entire village and its surrounding natural world. Yet for all its scope, Lapvona remains intensely focused on the visceral, the grotesque, and the disturbing—sometimes to its detriment.
The World of Lapvona: Medieval Brutality Uncensored
Moshfegh constructs a medieval fiefdom that feels both historically grounded and nightmarishly surreal. The village of Lapvona exists in a state of perpetual suffering, subject to the whims of its lord, Villiam, who rules from his hilltop manor with casual cruelty. The villagers endure harsh seasonal changes, bandit attacks, and eventually a catastrophic drought that drives them to cannibalism and madness.
The world-building is impressively detailed yet deliberately vague in its historical and geographical specificity—this could be any feudal European society, making its horrors feel universal rather than distant. The setting functions less as historical fiction and more as a canvas for Moshfegh to explore timeless themes of power, faith, and survival.
What stands out is Moshfegh’s refusal to romanticize this medieval world. There are no noble knights, no courtly love, no heroic quests—just people struggling to survive under brutal conditions, their lives cheap and their deaths often meaningless. The author renders this world with such visceral detail that the reader can almost smell the unwashed bodies, the rotting flesh, and the stench of human waste that permeates every scene.
Characters Trapped in Cycles of Abuse and Power
The characters of Lapvona exist in a moral landscape as bleak as the physical one. At the center is Marek, physically deformed and emotionally stunted by abuse, whose desperate need for love makes him both pitiful and dangerous. His father Jude, the village shepherd, is a study in contradictions—capable of tender care for his lambs yet brutally abusive to his son.
Lord Villiam represents the apex of privilege without purpose—a man who treats governance as a form of entertainment, indulging his every whim while the villagers starve. Father Barnabas serves as his ecclesiastical puppet, twisting religious doctrine to serve his master’s interests.
The women of Lapvona deserve special mention, particularly Ina, the blind midwife whose connection to the natural world grants her unusual powers, and Agata, Marek’s mother, whose story reveals the novel’s most disturbing revelations about family and lineage.
What makes these characters compelling isn’t their likability—there is hardly a sympathetic figure among them—but rather how thoroughly they embody the warped society that produced them. Each character represents a different response to trauma and powerlessness: some become abusers themselves, others retreat into fantasy or religion, while others exploit whatever small advantages they can find.
Thematic Depth: Faith, Power, and Nature
Beneath its relentless parade of horrors, Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh offers surprising thematic richness:
- Faith and Religion: The novel presents religion as both comfort and control mechanism. The villagers cling to faith even as their priest betrays them, illustrating humanity’s desperate need to believe in higher purpose.
- Power Dynamics: The hierarchical structure of medieval society provides Moshfegh with the perfect framework to examine how power corrupts and how the powerless survive.
- Nature vs. Civilization: Throughout the novel, the natural world serves as both threat and salvation. Ina’s connection to nature represents an alternative form of knowledge outside patriarchal and religious structures.
- Bodily Experience: As in her previous works, Moshfegh remains preoccupied with the body—its functions, failures, and indignities. Here she extends this focus to show how physical suffering shapes belief and behavior.
- Family Ties: Blood relationships in Lapvona are rarely sources of comfort; instead they perpetuate cycles of abuse and delusion.
Prose Style: Unflinching and Unadorned
Ottessa Moshfegh’s prose in Lapvona maintains the stripped-down, direct quality of her previous work while adapting to the medieval setting. She avoids the pitfall of faux-archaic dialogue, instead giving her characters a plainspoken quality that emphasizes their humanity despite the distant setting.
The author excels at physical description, particularly of suffering bodies and grotesque acts. Consider this passage where Jude observes the aftermath of a bandit attack:
“The heads of the dead were covered only in thin cloths. Marek imagined that their faces were still alive. He could see their eyelashes grazing the fabric as a soft wind blew. He saw the outlines of their lips and thought they were moving, speaking to him, warning him to get away.”
This unflinching gaze extends to the novel’s many disturbing scenes, which Moshfegh presents without moral commentary. The effect is both powerful and occasionally numbing—by refusing to guide the reader’s emotional response, she forces a confrontation with uncomfortable realities.
Structural Strengths and Weaknesses
The novel unfolds over the course of a year, divided into five sections corresponding to the seasons. This cyclical structure reinforces the novel’s interest in natural rhythms and how they impact human society.
The pacing, however, is uneven. The drought section, comprising much of the summer, creates a hallucinatory intensity that’s difficult to sustain. Later sections sometimes feel rushed by comparison, with major developments—including the final power shift—occurring with jarring suddenness.
Critical Assessment: Bold but Uneven
Lapvona represents Ottessa Moshfegh’s most ambitious work to date, expanding her canvas while maintaining her characteristic intensity. However, the novel suffers from several significant flaws:
Strengths:
- Unflinching vision: Moshfegh never shies away from the brutal realities of her medieval world.
- Atmospheric immersion: The reader feels trapped in Lapvona’s nightmare alongside its characters.
- Thematic complexity: Despite its grim surface, the novel offers rich explorations of faith, power, and human nature.
- Unique perspective: The medieval setting is stripped of romantic notions, offering a fresh take on historical fiction.
Weaknesses:
- Relentless grimness: The novel’s unremitting bleakness sometimes crosses into gratuitousness.
- Character development: Several characters, particularly women characters beyond Ina, remain underdeveloped.
- Structural issues: The final sections feel rushed compared to the meticulously paced earlier chapters.
- Moral ambiguity: While ambiguity can be a strength, the novel occasionally seems to revel in depravity without purpose.
Comparison to Moshfegh’s Previous Works
Readers familiar with Moshfegh’s oeuvre will recognize her preoccupations with bodily functions, social outcasts, and uncomfortable truths. However, Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh represents a significant departure in setting and scope from her contemporary-set works like My Year of Rest and Relaxation or Eileen.
Where those novels focused intensely on a single disturbed consciousness, Lapvona adopts a more omniscient perspective, flitting between various characters’ minds. This broader canvas allows Moshfegh to examine social structures more explicitly but sometimes dilutes the psychological intensity that made her previous protagonists so compelling.
The medieval setting also pushes Moshfegh’s exploration of disgust and bodily abjection to new extremes. Scenes that might have been merely uncomfortable in her contemporary fiction become genuinely horrifying when placed in a context of medieval brutality.
For Whom Is This Novel?
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh is decidedly not for the faint of heart. Potential readers should be prepared for graphic descriptions of violence, bodily functions, sexual abuse, and cannibalism. Those seeking historical fiction with heroic characters or romantic plotlines will be disappointed and likely disturbed.
The ideal reader for this novel is someone who:
- Appreciates literature that challenges rather than comforts
- Has a strong stomach for graphic content
- Is interested in explorations of power dynamics and religious hypocrisy
- Enjoys fiction that defies easy categorization
- Values psychological insight over plot-driven narrative
Final Verdict: Bold, Disturbing, and Uneven
Lapvona represents both Ottessa Moshfegh’s most ambitious work and her most uneven. Its medieval setting provides a fascinating canvas for her explorations of power, faith, and human depravity, but the relentless grimness sometimes overwhelms the novel’s thematic richness.
At its best, Lapvona offers a visceral reading experience unlike anything else in contemporary fiction—a medievalist nightmare that feels both historically distant and uncomfortably relevant to modern power structures. At its worst, it indulges in grotesquerie that seems designed to shock rather than illuminate.
For readers willing to endure its horrors, Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh offers genuine rewards: incisive social critique, moments of dark humor, and fleeting glimpses of beauty amidst brutality. It confirms Moshfegh as one of our most fearless contemporary writers, even when her ambitions exceed her execution.