***** *From the** **bestselling author of* **The Handmaid’s Tale* **and** ***The Testaments— *the* ***brilliant and funny story (Joan Didion, bestselling author of* Let Me Tell You What I Mean *) of a woman whose attempts to escape herself become instead an occasion for confronting the self-deception that has driven her since childhood* * Joan Foster is a woman with numerous identities and a talent for shedding them at will. She has written trashy gothic romances, had affairs with a Polish count and an absurd avant-garde artist, and played at being a politically engaged partner to her activist husband. After a volume of her poetry becomes an unexpected literary sensation, her new fame attracts a blackmailer threatening to reveal her secrets. Joan’s response is to fake her own death and flee to a hill town in Italy. Studded with hair-raising comic escapades and piercing psychological insights, *Lady Oracle* is both hilarious and profound.