The Sin Eater

A sin eater's duty is a necessary evil: she hears the final private confessions of the dying and eats their sins as a funeral rite, so guaranteeing their souls access to heaven. It is always women who eat sins - since it was Eve who first ate the Forbidden Fruit - and every town has at least one, not that they are publicly acknowledged. Stained by the sins they are obliged to consume, the sin eater is shunned and silenced, doomed to live in exile at the edge of town. Recently orphaned May Owens is just fourteen, and has never considered what it might be like to be so ostracized; she's more concerned with where her next meal is coming from. When she's arrested for stealing a loaf of bread, however, and subsequently sentenced to become a sin eater, finding food is suddenly the last of her worries. It's a devastating sentence, but May's new invisibility opens doors. And when first one then two of the Queen's courtiers suddenly grow ill, May hears their deathbed confessions - and begins to investigate a terrible rumour that is only whispered amid palace corridors. Set in a thinly disguised sixteenth-century England, The Sin Eater is a wonderfully imaginative and gripping story of treason and treachery; of secrets and silence; of women, of power - and ultimately of the strange freedom that comes from being an outcast, because, as May learns, being a nobody sometimes counts for everything . . . Megan Campisi is a playwright and novelist. She has previously received the French Alfa and ADAMI prizes for her plays, which have been performed in France, China and the United States. In 2019 she received a Fulbright Specialist Award to give master classes at Tatbikat Theatre in Turkey. She holds a BA from Yale and a Diplme (MFA) from L'Ecole de Thtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. The Sin Eater is her first novel.