A grieving young woman learns something new about love from a dominatrix in this haunting and erotic debut.

Echo is a failing actress who prefers to lose herself in the lives of others rather than examine her own. When her father disappears in a seaside misstep, she and her mother are left grief-stricken, unsure of how to piece back together their family that, it turns out, had never been whole. But then Orly -- a dominatrix -- moves in across the street. And through her, Echo begins to find the pieces that will allow her to carry on. Set among the bright colours and harshly glittering lights of Los Angeles, this is a love story about people addled with dreams and expectations who turn to the erotic for answers.

Saskia Vogel grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in Berlin, where she works as a writer and Swedish-to-English literary translator. She has written on the themes of gender, power, and sexuality for publications such as The White Review, The Offing, and The Quietus. Previously, she worked as Granta magazine's global publicist and as an editor at the AVN Media Network, where she reported on pornography and adult pleasure products. She is the author of the novel Permission.

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"Saskia Vogel's provocative debut novel, Permission, is like a trick box full of sliding panels. Her protagonist, jarred loose from her life by the accidental death of her father, finds that the boundaries she's always taken as given begin to slide open, revealing secret zones of power and sexuality within the world and within herself. Beautifully written, mysterious and compelling."

Janet Fitch