For the past two years people have been asking if Ottessa Moshfegh has magic powers to predict the future. Before we even knew what Covid-19 was, she wrote a novel about a woman who puts herself into voluntary isolation. When we all followed suit, the darkly funny My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which came out in 2018, had a revival. It has now been mentioned more than 24 million times on TikTok, with Moshfegh being hailed as the “laureate of lockdown” and Margot Robbie working on a film adaptation.
Moshfegh, now 41, was “shocked”. “I thought that book had flown the coop,” she says from her airy, white-walled bedroom in Pasadena, California. It’s 8am, she has just woken up and is still wearing her “sleeping sweater”, which is thin, dark gray cashmere. “I’m glad people found it and it was cathartic.” She takes a sip of coffee. “Thank God it is a bit funny because really it is a sad book — about a person who doesn’t want to face the world.”
