Lauren Khan is a painter struck by a sudden inability to paint. Brought to a halt by an unnatural and unnerving development in her work-in-progress, she faces a creative impasse and begins to drift away from herself. But Lauren’s inner fracturing may have triggers beyond her unfinished canvas: in the mindgames her mother plays in an effort to rewrite the past, in the public acclaim for her friend and fellow painter Juliana, and in her unspeakable infatuation with the man she calls The Poet.

Eerie, elliptical, and impressionistic, In the Direction of the Wound examines an identity defined by a lifetime of making art — and destabilised when artistic energies falter. Unfolding in the fragmentary mode of Maggie Nelson and Siri Hustvedt, it parallels Lauren’s crisis with the trials of celebrated predecessors — from Caravaggio to Constable, from Manet to Beuys — so that her struggles are infused with insights into theirs. The result is a beguiling hybrid of literary forms, equal parts fictional and essayistic, that pulses with reverence for visual innovation, for the enrichment of the visible world.