“What a joy it is to think alongside Elizabeth Abel, our most brilliant critic of Virginia Woolf’s fiction. A work of gentle genius, Odd Affinities brims with startling readings of Woolf’s hidden presence in the writings of Larsen, Baldwin, Barthes, and Sebald. It is a delight to agree with Abel, and a delight to disagree with her too, as the very act of disagreement surfaces other odd affinities. I will return to this astonishing book again and again.”

Merve Emre, editor of "The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway"

“Challenging caricatures of Woolf as an insular British writer, Elizabeth Abel’s strikingly original case studies show how the work of this touchstone figure inspires artists across race, class, sex, gender, national, and generational differences and resonates at deep levels in their imaginative and theoretical writings. Odd Affinities captures fascinating sotto voce literary conversations—the remarkable fruits of Abel’s free, organic adventure in scholarly reading—and enhances our understanding of literary influence as such.”

Christine Froula, author of "Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde"

“Elizabeth Abel’s startling mode of literary genealogy reveals how Woolf’s modernist work, in both content and form, shaped some of the most significant literature of the twentieth century. Odd Affinities does not simply bring Woolf’s writing into dialogue with Larsen, Baldwin, Barthes, and Sebald; it invites us to listen to the whispered conversations her work was already having with these writers as they produced their major works, and we are left wondering how and why we missed the Woolfian influence on these diverse oeuvres for so long.”

Kabe Wilson, artist and creator of "Olivia N’Gowfri - Of One Woman or So"