Hanne Ørstavik

WINNER OF THE 2019 PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A mother and son move to a village in northern Norway, each ensconced in their own world. Their distance has fatal consequences. Love is the story of Vibeke and Jon, a mother and son who have just moved to a small place in the north of Norway. It's the day before Jon's birthday, and a travelling carnival has come to the village. Jon goes out to sell lottery tickets for his sports club, and Vibeke is going to the library. From here on we follow the two individuals on their separate journeys through a cold winter's night - while a sense of uneasiness grows. Love illustrates how language builds its own reality, and thus how mother and son can live in completely separate worlds. This distance is found not only between human beings, but also within each individual. This novel shows how such distance may have fatal consequences.

Love

A penetrating study of passion, suffering, and loss from one of Norway’s most tenacious writers: National Book Award Finalist and PEN translation prize winner Hanne Ørstavik Celebrated throughout the world for her candor and sensitivity to the rhythms of language, Hanne Ørstavik is a leading light on the international stage. Ørstavik writes with “a compulsion for truth that feels like [her] very life force itself.” Laced with a tingling frankness, Ørstavik’s prose adheres so closely to the inner workings of its narrator’s mind as to nearly undo itself. In Martin Aitken’s translation, Ørstavik’s piercing story sings. Ti Amo brings a new, deeply personal approach, as the novel is based in Ørstavik’s own experience of losing her Italian husband to cancer. By facing loss directly, she includes readers in an experience that many face in isolation. Written and set in the early months of 2020, its themes of loss and suffering are particularly well suited for a time of international mourning. What can be found within a gaze? What lies inside a painting or behind a handful of repeated words? These are the questions that haunt our unnamed narrator as she tends to her husband, stricken with cancer, in the final months of his life. She examines the elements of their life together: their Vietnamese rose-colored folding table where they eat their meals, each of the New Year’s Eves they’ve shared, their friendships, and their most intimate exchanges. With everything in flux, she searches for the facets that will remain.

Ti Amo

Kjærlighet

Amor

حُب

A major work of contemporary fiction from a “leading light of international literature” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Hanne Ørstavik, whose last novel, Love, won the PEN Translation Prize. A thought-provoking, existential novel – as Liv searches for meaning and identity in her own life, she must find the words to connect, comfort and lead others. Liv, an intense and reticent theologian, moves to a bitterly cold fishing village to take up a post as the church’s new pastor following the death of her friend, Kristiane. In the upper rooms of a large house overlooking the fjord, Liv plans her sermons and studies the violent interplay of Norway’s Christian colonial past. She trails downstairs into the apartment below for dinners and breakfasts with a widow and her two children. As Liv becomes acquainted with the villagers and their own private tragedies, memories bloom in passages that urgently question the unpredictable bedrock of language, and the peculiar channels of imagined experience as it might have been, if only there had been a different set of words, or an outstretched hand. The past mingles darkly with the present, cascading in chilling images: a dog lying dead in the snowy plains, Kristiane’s teeth flashing as she laughs, a procession of singing, knife-carrying protesters curving along a river’s edge. Martin Aitken’s translation of this extraordinary novel rings with the brilliance and rigor of a master.

The Pastor

Marianne Molenaar

De zelfzuchtige ouders van een jong meisje en haar broer zijn in een bijna constant gevecht met elkaar verwikkeld; ze beperken hun kinderen door middel van rigide regels.

Tijd

"Johanne is a young woman in her twenties who lives in Oslo with her mother. When she falls in love with Ivar, she finally feels ready to leave home. The couple plan a trip to America. But the morning of her departure, Johanne wakes up to find the door locked. Can she overcome her fears? Will she shout for help? Will she climb out of her seventh floor window?"--Provided by publisher.

The blue room

Hans Edvard Nørregård-Nielsen

Kristian Ditlev Jensen

Bjørn Rasmussen

Pablo Llambías

Dy Plambeck

Jørgen Leth

Bodil Steensen-Leth

Suzanne Brøgger

Leif Davidsen

Ursula Andkjær Olsen

Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen

Rune T. Kidde

Hanne Marie Svendsen

Jens Smærup Sørensen

Katrine Grünfeld

Denne bog samler de både meget berømmede og meget forkætrede forfatterprædikener, der blev holdt i Sankt Jakobs Kirke på Østerbro i København forår-efterår 2012.

red. Pablo Llambías og Rasmus Nøjgaard

Forfatterprædikener i Sankt Jakobs Kirke

A penetrating study of passion, suffering, and loss from one of Norway’s most tenacious writers: National Book Award Finalist and PEN translation prize winner Hanne Ørstavik Celebrated throughout the world for her candor and sensitivity to the rhythms of language, Hanne Ørstavik is a leading light on the international stage. Ørstavik has “a compulsion for truth that feels like [her] very life force itself.” Tentative, laced with a tingling frankness, Ørstavik’s prose adheres so closely to the inner workings of its narrator’s mind as to nearly undo itself. In Martin Aitken’s translation, Ørstavik’s piercing story sings. Ti Amo brings a new, deeply personal approach, as the novel is based in Ørstavik’s own experience of losing her Italian husband to cancer. By facing loss directly, she includes readers in an experience that many face in isolation. Written and set in the early months of 2020, its themes of loss and suffering are particularly well suited for a time of international mourning. What can be found within a gaze? What lies inside a painting or behind a handful of repeated words? These are the questions that haunt our unnamed narrator as she tends to her husband, stricken with cancer, in the final months of his life. She examines the elements of their life together: their Vietnamese rose-colored folding table where they eat their meals, each of the New Year’s Eves they’ve shared, their friendships, and their most intimate exchanges. With everything in flux, she searches for the facets that will remain.

Hakk

A novel about a mother-daughter relationship that will send a chill down your spine. Johanne is a young woman in her twenties who lives with her mother. When she falls in love with Ivar, she finally feels ready to leave home. The couple plan a trip to America. But the morning of her departure, Johanne wakes up to find the door locked. Can she overcome her fears? Will she shout for help? Will she climb out of her fourth floor window? Why Peirene chose to publish this book: ‘Everyone who has read Fifty Shades of Grey should read this book. Why? The Blue Room holds up a mirror to a part of the female psyche that yearns for submission. The story shows how erotic fantasies are formed by the relationship with our parents. It then delves further to analyse the struggle of women to separate from their mothers - a struggle that is rarely addressed in either literature or society.’ Meike Ziervogel ‘A masterpiece of unreliable narration.’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian ‘A highly unusual, coolly daring psychological thriller that explores emotional pain and indifference with an unsettling detachment.’ Eileen Battersby, Irish Times ‘A work of chilling, masterly control.’ Laura Profumo, Times Literary Supplement ‘Nothing is certain, no motive is clear and no person is above suspicion in Ørstavik’s perfectly pitched, tightly stitched and captivating brain-teaser.’ Pam Norfolk, Lancashire Evening Post ‘Ørstavik treats the everyday and existential with intensity.’ Max Liu, Independent ‘Psychologically astute and deftly translated . . . A brilliant examination of a woman struggling to own her sexuality, to break free from the guilt and forge her own identity.’ Lucy Popescu, Tablet GUARDIAN PAPERBACKS OF THE YEAR 2014

Hanne Ørstavik

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