Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
"The cumulative effect is hypnotic. Hjorth works finely parsed and brilliant variations on her unrelenting theme of familial mistrust and misunderstanding." -New York Times
"A prickly, persuasive novel. Like Knausgaard, Hjorth is writing against repression, against the taboo on telling things as they really are. But he urges us to look at dead bodies; she forces us to regard bleeding souls." -New Yorker Four siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret. When a dispute over her parents' will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled twenty years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer houses to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. To outsiders, it is a quarrel about property and favouritism. But Bergljot, who has borne a horrible secret since childhood, understands the gesture as something very different--a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured. Will and Testament is a lyrical meditation on trauma and memory, as well as a furious account of a woman's struggle to survive and be believed. Vigdis Hjorth's novel became a controversial literary sensation in Norway and has been translated into twenty languages.
Author: Vigdis Hjorth
Publisher: Verso Fiction
Published: 09/10/2019
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 7.70h x 5.10w x 0.90d
ISBN13: 9781788733106
ISBN10: 178873310X
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Women
- Fiction | Absurdist
"The cumulative effect is hypnotic. Hjorth works finely parsed and brilliant variations on her unrelenting theme of familial mistrust and misunderstanding." -New York Times
"A prickly, persuasive novel. Like Knausgaard, Hjorth is writing against repression, against the taboo on telling things as they really are. But he urges us to look at dead bodies; she forces us to regard bleeding souls." -New Yorker Four siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret. When a dispute over her parents' will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled twenty years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer houses to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. To outsiders, it is a quarrel about property and favouritism. But Bergljot, who has borne a horrible secret since childhood, understands the gesture as something very different--a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured. Will and Testament is a lyrical meditation on trauma and memory, as well as a furious account of a woman's struggle to survive and be believed. Vigdis Hjorth's novel became a controversial literary sensation in Norway and has been translated into twenty languages.
Author: Vigdis Hjorth
Publisher: Verso Fiction
Published: 09/10/2019
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 7.70h x 5.10w x 0.90d
ISBN13: 9781788733106
ISBN10: 178873310X
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Women
- Fiction | Absurdist
About the Author
Vigdis Hjorth is the author of over a dozen prize-winning and bestselling novels. Will and Testament sold 150,000 copies in Norway and has received several awards, including the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Norwegian Booksellers' Prize, as well as being nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. She lives in Oslo.