Lydia Sandgren

I Göteborg förbereds en stor retrospektiv över konstnären Gustav Beckers verk från 1980-talet och framåt. Vart psykologstudenten Rakel än vänder sig möter hon sin gåtfullt försvunna mammas ansikte på utställningsaffischen som är tapetserad över stan. I samma veva slungas Rakels pappa, förläggaren Martin Berg, in i en omtumlande livskris. ?Samlade verk? är en roman om djup kärlek, mångårig vänskap och konst i spänningsfältet mellan fiktion och sanning. Dessutom är det en storslagen Göteborgsskildring med moderniteten och klassresan som fond. Se recension på: https://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/bokrecensioner/a/Xg7gOr/700-sidor-av-litterar-lyskraft.

Samlade verk

Collected Works

Gesammelte Werke

'Thrilling, brilliant and immense in the best possible way... teeming with ideas and digressions on literature, art, history and love' Francesca Reece, author of Voyeur 'Compelling, tense and moving – I loved this smart and subtle exploration of modern motherhood and womanhood' Daisy Buchanan, author of Insatiable 'Vibrating with intelligence and style' Emily Temple, author of The Lightness ________________ In the long run, it was impossible to hide the fact that Cecilia had one day decided to leave her children and her husband, to take off and never come back. Martin Berg is slowly falling into crisis. Decades ago, he was an aspiring writer who'd almost finished his novel, his girlfriend was the wildly intelligent and beautiful Cecilia Wickner, and his best friend was the up-and-coming artist Gustav Becker. But Martin's manuscript has long been languishing in a desk drawer, Gustav has stopped answering his calls, and Cecilia has been missing for years - ever since she vanished from his life, leaving him to raise their two young children alone. So who was Cecilia? Martin's eccentric wife, Gustav's enigmatic muse, an absent mother - a woman who was perhaps only true to herself. When Martin's daughter Rakel stumbles across a clue about what happened to her mother, she becomes determined to fill in the gaps in her family's story. But she can't escape the simple question at the heart of it all: How can anyone leave someone they love? ________________ '[ Collected Works] will suck you in and refuse to let go' LitHub 'A richly evocative work from a major new talent' Kirkus Reviews 'A sweeping and complex drama of family, art and sacrifice... Readers will be captivated' Publishers Weekly '[A] warm, engaging and funny novel about the inebriation of youth and the sobriety of middle age... a thoroughly enjoyable book' Ayşegül Savaş, author of White on White

A Novel: 'A wry bestseller that reads like the effortlessly chic European cousin of Fleishman is in Trouble' (Telegraph)

Samlede værker

A compelling mystery, a poignant bildungsroman, and a work of great nostalgia for times just past, COLLECTED WORKS is a novel about love, power and art—and what leads us to make the pivotal decisions that change the course of our lives. Martin Berg's wife, Cecilia, disappeared years ago. His memories of their carefree college days seem ever out-of-reach, and the intellectual curiosities that once made him the object of her desire have given way to mid-life uncertainty. The methodical and quiet life he’s made for himself and his adult children couldn’t be further from the one he dreamed of in his youth, when the manuscripts lying around his apartment were flush with promise and the ailing publishing house he runs was still new. Perhaps nothing reminds Martin of these failures more than his friend Gustav Becker, a wildly successful painter who’s returned to Gothenburg on the eve of his career-defining retrospective. Gustav, meanwhile, is hurting too. His obsession with Cecilia’s inexplicable disappearance had made his art hagiographic, fixated on her image. When posters for Gustav’s retrospective plaster Cecilia’s face on major billboards across the city, Martin’s daughter Rakel learns a haunting fact that points toward her mother’s whereabouts. She and her brother chase this clue across time, memory, and Europe, to discover why their beloved mother abandoned her family, with the imagined hope that the question of what makes a person can ever be answered. COLLECTED WORKS, a major hit in Sweden, sold over 100,000 copies in its first year in print, instantly making Lydia Sandgren a literary sensation. Winner of the 2020 August Prize for Fiction, the novel is set to publish in 17 territories.

Der Göteborger Verleger Martin Berg steckt in einer Krise: Die Verlagsgeschäfte stocken, Martins Frau Cecilia ist Jahre zuvor spurlos aus seinem Leben verschwunden, sein großes Romanprojekt liegt unvollendet in der Schublade und seine Freundschaft zu dem gefeierten Künstler Gustav Becker scheint endgültig erkaltet. Während Martin in Erinnerungen an seine Studienzeit in der Göteborger und Pariser Bohème versinkt, blickt seine Tochter Rakel an jeder Straßenecke in die Augen ihrer verschwundenen Mutter, deren Porträt das Plakat einer großen Gustav-Becker-Retrospektive ziert. Als Rakel glaubt, Cecilia in dem Roman eines Berliner Schriftstellers wiederzuerkennen, scheint es an der Zeit, den Schatten, der über ihrer Familie liegt, endlich zu vertreiben. Feinfühlig und klug erzählt Lydia Sandgren in ihrem gefeierten Debütroman von einer besonderen Freundschaft und einer besonderen Liebe – und setzt nicht zuletzt der Liebe zur Literatur ein Denkmal.

Trude Marstein

Den vellykkede forleggeren Martin Berg ser tilbake på tiden fra oppveksten i Gøteborg på 1980-tallet, til han i dag står midt i en brutal livskrise. Gjennom ham blir vi kjent med gymnasvennen Gustav som blir en berømt kunstner og Cecilia som Martin gifter seg og får to barn med. Men Cecilia forlater Martin og barna og ingen vet hvor hun er. Noen av Gustavs beste portretter er av henne, og når det skal være en stor retrospektiv utstilling med hans kunst møter psykologistudenten Rakel sin forsvunne mors gåtefulle blikk fra plakater over hele byen. Samlede verker er en roman om dyp kjærlighet, vennskap og kunst. Vinner av Augstprisen 2020.

Lydia Sandgren

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