Exquisite Corpse

Shortlisted for the 2024 Davitt Award for Best Adult Novel

Romance is dead…
He pulled up his stool and looked me over carefully, lightly touching my skin here and there.
‘Because, my sweet girl, you are so very beautiful and that beauty deserves to be recorded for the world to see.’
Beautiful but impoverished Lina Dahlstrom is dying of tuberculosis and it seems that no one can save her. All hope is lost until an eccentric doctor, Carl Dance, becomes enthralled with Lina’s charms and vows to do everything in his power to cure her. But when the illness inevitably claims Lina’s life, Dance’s obsession with her only grows and so begins a mad and criminal scheme to bring her back from beyond the grave and claim her as his own forever.

Set in Stockholm in 1930 and based on true events, Exquisite Corpse is a story about the madness and horror of a romance that knows no bounds.

PRAISE FOR EXQUISITE CORPSE
​‘Haunting.’ – Australian Women’s Weekly

‘A brilliant hammer-swing at the notion that a woman is her most beautiful in death, Peričić’s darkly visceral account of entitlement and deluded obsession is jaw-dropping. Exquisite Corpse is ingenious Australian gothic at its macbre best.’ – Sarah Schmidt, author of The Blue Hour and See What I Have Done

‘Historical fiction for a post #metoo world, Exquisite Corpse gets to the bone-tingling core of why consent matters, and always has.’ – Pip Smith, author of Half Wild