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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 realize that he almost certainly is not alone.

A terrifying psychological nightmare from a powerful new voice in horror.

Publishers Weekly starred review

Booklist STAR review

Click to read full review

MONTREAL

Oct 1, 7pm

Espace Drawn & Quarterly

in conversation with James Resendes of Gay Writes

TORONTO

Oct 5, 1-3pm

Little Ghosts Bookstore

in conversation with Andrew F. Sullivan

MONTREAL

Oct 8, 7pm

Librairie De Stiil

in conversation with Jacob Wren

“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, New York Times bestselling author of Whalefall

“Coup de Grâce 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, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts

"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, New York Times bestselling author of Hell Followed With Us and The Spirit Bears Its Teeth

“Coup de Grâce 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, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters

“An aching spectacle of bleakness and jewelled prose; Coup de Grâce is one hell of a debut for multi-talented Sofia Ajram."

— Cassandra Khaw, USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth

“The decision, the ride, the beautiful stranger, the end you always knew would find you - Sofia Ajram’s Coup De Grâce is wholly original and totally, despairingly, passionately alive.”

— Kathe Koja, author of Dark Factory and The Cipher

““Alienating, exquisite, and disturbing; a poem in blood and concrete. I can’t recommend it enough.””
— Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo

"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." 

— AC Wise, Bram Stoker Award® nominated author of The Ghost Sequences

“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 Grâce 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, author of Our Own Unique Affliction

“In this caustic confrontation with the self, Ajram’s carefully crafted dread is a hand wrapped around your throat.”
— Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold

“COUP DE GRÂCE 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, author of Linghun

“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, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth and A Light Most Hateful

“Mind-bendingly tense, Ajram winds the reader through prose that arcs and fizzles with the distraught terror of survival. Coup de Grâce 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, author of Deliver Me

“COUP DE GRÂCE is a fearless gem by a singular new voice in Sofia Ajram. Intimate and epic all at once, this story knows you already, and leads you by the hand into a vast and unimaginable horror.” 

—Andy Mitton, co-director of Yellowbrickroad and director of The Witch in the Window

“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 Grâce is teeming with rare life.”

— Josh Malerman, New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box and Incidents Around the House

“A moving and gorgeously written debut novella, Sofia Ajram’s Coup de Grâce 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, author of the Bram Stoker Award® winning first novel, Beulah
“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, author of Clown in a Cornfield
“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 Grâce is a gift to anyone who reads it, wrapped neatly in slate gray paper and topped with a Möbius strip bow.”
— Scott Leeds, author of Schrader's Chord
“Sofia Ajram’s Coup de Grâce 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 Grâce 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, finalist for the Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker Awards
“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, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
“Coup de Grâce is an eerie, twisty, mind-bendingly enjoyable masterpiece of truly Backroom-sized proportions. Compulsive AF”
— Gemma Amor, Bram Stoker-nominated author of Dear Laura
“Ajram understands the itch and gnaw of self-annihilation, constructing a labyrinth from its thrum and beckon. Coup de Grâce 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, author of Negative Space
“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 Grâce invites you to get hopelessly lost within the labyrinthine mind of a formidable new force in horror.”
— Michael Wehunt, author of The Inconsolables and Greener Pastures
“Coup de Grâce is dark, visceral, and refreshing. It’s horror that feels modern and exciting, it pulls you down into the depths with the protagonist and holds you under until the last page. It’s an insanely impressive debut, combining surreal backrooms, queerness, suicidal ideation and a tender understanding of what it FEELS like to be mentally ill. I felt this book deep in my bones, and, as dark as it is, it was powerful to feel so seen.”
— Isa Mazzei, writer of CAM and producer of How to Blow Up a Pipeline
“A slender, terrifying volume in which to lose yourself completely. Sofia Ajram’s remarkable debut Coup de Grâce 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, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Bone Mother and RED X

Content Warnings

Coup de Grâce is a story primarily about depression and suicide. In dealing with these subjects, the book includes scenes with reference to suicidal ideation and depictions of self-harm.

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please reach out for support. Please do not struggle in silence.

Coup de Grâce Novella Trailer by Chris McAllister