Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch

‘Riveting’ Margaret Atwood
‘I loved this book intensely’ Lauren Groff Guardian

The startling, witty, highly anticipated second novel from the critically acclaimed author of Atmospheric Disturbances.




The plague is spreading.


The Thirty Years’ War is beginning.


Katharina Kepler is believed to be a witch.



An illiterate widow, Katherina Kepler is known by her neighbours for her herbal remedies and the success of her children, including her eldest, Johannes, who is the Imperial Mathematician and renowned author of the laws of planetary motion. It's enough to make anyone jealous, and Katharina has done herself no favours by being out and about and up in everyone's business.


So when the deranged and insipid Ursula Reinbold (or as Katharina calls her, the Werewolf) accuses Katharina of offering her a bitter, witchy drink that has made her ill, Katharina is in trouble. Her scientist son must turn his attention from the music of the spheres to the job of defending his mother. Facing the threat of financial ruin, torture, and even execution, Katharina tells her side of the story.


Provocative and entertaining, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch draws on real historical documents to touchingly illuminate a society, and a family, undone by superstition the state, and the mortal convulsions of history. It is a story of our time – of a community implicated in collective aggression and hysterical fear.