Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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To write Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh bought a copy of Alan Watt’s The 90-Day Novel and followed it as a guide until day 60. She has said it began as a joke on the publishing industry: “I thought, ‘I’ll show you how easy this is.’” The novel came out in 2015, won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Three years later My Year of Rest and Relaxation, about a young woman in Manhattan who tries to sleep for a year, made her one of the most discussed American novelists of her generation. Her narrators drink, steal, sleep and lie, and she has called the “unlikeable” label for them sexist. This guide covers her six key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 key books · 2014–2022 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Ottessa Moshfegh has published six books: McGlue (2014), Eileen (2015), Homesick for Another World (2017), My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), Death in Her Hands (2020) and Lapvona (2022). Start with My Year of Rest and Relaxation, her best-known novel; Eileen, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and filmed in 2023, is the natural second.
Where to Start with Ottessa Moshfegh
If you want her best-known novel
→ My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) — a year of pills and sleep in New York, 2000–2001.
If you want a dark psychological thriller
→ Eileen (2015) — the Booker-shortlisted novel set in 1964.
If you want her short stories
→ Homesick for Another World (2017).
If you want something stranger
→ Lapvona (2022) — a medieval village, cruelty and folk horror.
6 Ottessa Moshfegh Books, in Order
McGlue
In 1851 a drunken sailor named McGlue wakes chained in the hold of a ship bound for Salem, Massachusetts, accused of murdering his friend and shipmate Johnson. He cannot remember the night, and as withdrawal sets in he pieces it together. Based on an 1851 newspaper article, it won the inaugural Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award; Penguin reissued it in 2019.
Eileen
December 1964, in a New England town she calls X-ville: Eileen, 24, is a secretary at a prison for teenage boys and looks after her alcoholic father at home. A glamorous new counsellor, Rebecca Saint John, draws her into a crime. The story is told by Eileen fifty years later. Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; filmed in 2023 by William Oldroyd with Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway.
Homesick for Another World
Fourteen stories, among them “Bettering Myself”, which won the 2013 Plimpton Prize after appearing in The Paris Review. In “No Place for Good People” a lonely widower takes a job looking after three men with developmental disabilities. The collection was a finalist for The Story Prize.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
In 2000 an unnamed young woman on the Upper East Side, a recent Columbia graduate whose parents have both died, decides to sleep for a year, helped by a psychiatrist, Dr. Tuttle, who prescribes almost anything. Her only regular visitor is her friend Reva. The novel ends in September 2001. A New York Times bestseller; Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap bought the film rights in 2018.
Death in Her Hands
Vesta Gul, a 72-year-old widow, finds a note in the woods while walking her dog: “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.” There is no body. Vesta starts inventing who Magda was and how she died. Kirkus called it a satire of the detective novel; it was a New York Times bestseller.
Lapvona
In a corrupt medieval fiefdom, Marek, a deformed 13-year-old shepherd’s son, is handed over to the cruel lord Villiam after a crime and taken to live in the castle. Reviews were divided: Dwight Garner in The New York Times called it “a bleak, meandering and muddy-soled mix of fairy tale and folk horror”, while Publishers Weekly called it “a triumph”.
In What Order to Read Ottessa Moshfegh
None of the books are connected, so you can read them in any order. Publication order shows her range: a historical novella, a 1960s noir, a contemporary New York novel, a mock detective story and a medieval fable, all built around one isolated narrator or central figure.
Most readers start with My Year of Rest and Relaxation and go on to Eileen. Read Homesick for Another World for the shorter version of the same voice, and leave Lapvona, her most divisive book, until you know whether her darker side is for you.
A reading path
1. My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)
2. Eileen (2015)
3. Homesick for Another World (2017)
4. Death in Her Hands (2020)
5. Lapvona (2022)
Everything Else Ottessa Moshfegh Published
Beyond the 6 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other work
1
1 book · 2021
- 2021My New Novela short story published as an art book by Picture Books, a Gagosian imprint
The years · 1981–2023
Quick facts about Ottessa Moshfegh
- Known for
- Narrators who are hard to like and harder to stop reading, above all the sleeping heroine of My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018).
- 1981
- Born in Boston, Massachusetts
- 2002
- BA in English, Barnard College
- 2023
- Eileen film with Anne Hathaway
- Born
- 20 May 1981, Boston, Massachusetts, to a Croatian mother and an Iranian father, both musicians
- Education
- Barnard College (BA, 2002); Brown University (MFA, 2011); Stegner Fellow at Stanford, 2013–2015
- Debut
- McGlue (2014), winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose
- Prizes
- Plimpton Prize (2013); PEN/Hemingway Award for Eileen (2016)
- Shortlists
- Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award for Eileen
- Screenwriting
- Co-wrote Causeway (2022) and the film of Eileen (2023)
The red mark is 2018: My Year of Rest and Relaxation, her best-known novel.
How Ottessa Moshfegh Writes: Close to the Unlikeable
Almost every Moshfegh book is told from inside one isolated person: a blackout drunk on a ship, a 24-year-old prison secretary who hates her own body, a woman who medicates herself to sleep for a year, a widow alone with her dog. They say what readers would rather not hear and rarely become better people. When an interviewer raised likeability, she answered: “It’s not my job to please people who can’t tolerate anything but lukewarm baths.”
The comedy is as important as the disgust. Critics of My Year of Rest and Relaxation praised its dark humour and called its narrator “hypnotically unlikeable”. She also uses genre and then empties it: Eileen is built like a noir, Death in Her Hands like a detective story, Lapvona like a fairy tale, but the plot matters less than the mind it passes through.
She drafts fast and revises long: she has said she drafted Eileen in about six weeks and spent around ten months revising it. She counts Charles Bukowski among her influences. For other writers of uncomfortable women, see the guides to Sylvia Plath and Patricia Highsmith linked below.
Watch
Ottessa Moshfegh: The Waterstones Interview
Ottessa Moshfegh is interviewed about her writing for the UK bookseller Waterstones. From the official Waterstones channel.
Frequently asked questions about Ottessa Moshfegh’s books
How many books has Ottessa Moshfegh written?
Six: the novella McGlue (2014), the novels Eileen (2015), My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), Death in Her Hands (2020) and Lapvona (2022), and the story collection Homesick for Another World (2017). She also published a single story, My New Novel (2021), as an art book.
What are Ottessa Moshfegh’s books in order?
McGlue (2014), Eileen (2015), Homesick for Another World (2017), My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), Death in Her Hands (2020) and Lapvona (2022).
Where should I start with Ottessa Moshfegh?
My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), her best-known novel and the most accessible way into her voice. Then read Eileen (2015).
What is Ottessa Moshfegh’s most famous book?
My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), about a young woman in New York who tries to sleep through a year with the help of prescription drugs. Eileen (2015) is her most decorated: it won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Is there a film of Eileen?
Yes. Eileen (2023), directed by William Oldroyd, stars Thomasin McKenzie as Eileen and Anne Hathaway as Rebecca. Moshfegh co-wrote the screenplay with Luke Goebel. It opened in US cinemas on 1 December 2023.
Is My Year of Rest and Relaxation being made into a film?
Film rights were bought in 2018 by LuckyChap Entertainment, Margot Robbie’s company, with Atlas Entertainment. No film has been released yet. A German-language stage version premiered in Zürich in 2020.
Did Ottessa Moshfegh win the Booker Prize?
No. Eileen was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016. It did win the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction.
Why are Ottessa Moshfegh’s characters so unlikeable?
Her narrators are often isolated, self-destructive and blunt, and critics have used the word “unlikeable” since Eileen. Moshfegh has called that label sexist when applied to her women characters, and has said she does not write to please readers.
Did Ottessa Moshfegh write Eileen with a how-to book?
Partly. She followed Alan Watt’s guide The 90-Day Novel until day 60, at first as a joke on the publishing industry, before the book “turned into a work of its own”.
Is Ottessa Moshfegh still writing?
Yes. She was born in 1981 and lives in Southern California. Her most recent novel is Lapvona (2022); she has also written for film, including Causeway (2022) and Eileen (2023).
Footnotes
- Ottessa Moshfegh — Wikipedia
- Ottessa Moshfegh — Encyclopædia Britannica
- Everything you need to know about Eileen — The Booker Prizes
- Why We Do Weird Things: An Interview With Ottessa Moshfegh — Electric Literature, 2015
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation — Wikipedia
- Lapvona — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Everything I write is feminist, because I don’t hate women, I hope.”
— Ottessa Moshfegh, interview with Megha Majumdar, Electric Literature (2015)
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