“An electrifying adventure, both tender and profane. Nervy, hilarious, and utterly unpredictable, Patrick deWitt has served up another dazzler.” Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

“In his delightful and dark new novel, Booker nominee deWitt brings his amusingly off-kilter vision to a European folk tale . . . DeWitt uses familiar tropes to lull the reader into a false sense of grounding, delivering with abundant good humor a fully realized, consistently surprising, and thoroughly amusing tale of longing, love, madness, and mirth.” Publishers Weekly

“… eerily precise … DeWitt is a true original, conjuring up dark and hilarious images. This is a bizarre, darkly funny, passionate … book.” The Times

“with its blend of fantasy and gothic romance, Undermajordomo Minor sounded unlikely to enchant a literalist like me. How wrong I was. From its pitch-perfect opening onwards, it’s clear from the unusual atmosphere and droll narration that deWitt has created a unique fictional universe….The challenge for the reader is to resist the temptation to devour a novel which should be savoured.” The Independent