Lote by Shola Von Reinhold / Duke University Press

This tasty bit of literary confectionery centers on the transfixions of Matilda, a Black researcher enraptured by the decadent pleasures of the Bright Young Things, particularly the glimmering traces left behind by Hermia Druitt, a Black woman who was a poet, possible resurrector of a lost cult of luxuries, and seemingly unforgettable, except that she has almost disappeared from the archive. Then Matilda is accepted to a residency of ascetic “thought artists” who seemingly stand in opposition to...