Spring/Summer
Anne Cathrine Eng anne.cathrine.eng@gyldendal.no Foreign Rights Director
Nina Pedersen nina.pedersen@gyldendal.no Literary Agent
Kirsti Kristoffersen kirsti.kristoffersen@gyldendal.no Film & TV Rights
// Visitor address
Sehesteds gate 4 0130 Oslo, Norway
Postal address
P.o. box 6860, St. Olavs plass 0130 Oslo, Norway
https://agency.gyldendal.no
NOVELS // CRIME
THRILLER // ESSAY
SELECTED CLASSICS
They Call Me The Wolf is a wise and moving examination of culture, history, family, identity and masculinity.
A man is visiting his father, who is moving to Pakistan. His father doesn’t want to grow old in Norway and his small apartment needs to be emptied.
The chore awakens memories from the man’s own childhood and youth, thoughts about his relationship with his own children, and reflections on his parents’ story – a story that began long before he was born. What are they really leaving behind?
They Call Me the Wolf is a novel about being a man from two countries, about having a mother from Finnmark and a father from Pakistan. It’s about being a parent, about the housing market, and about childhood. And it’s about survival and being hungry like a wolf.
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2022
240 pages
Foreign Sales:
Sweden, Bazar/Bonnier
Denmark, Gutkind
«Outstanding storyteller!»
Zeshan Shakar (b. 1982) grew up in Stovner in Oslo. He has a degree in political science and studied economics at BI Norwegian Business School. His debut novel, Our Street (2017), was awarded the Tarjei Vesaas Debutant Prize and has 160 000 copies sold. His second novel, Yellow book, was published in 2020. In 2020, Shakar received the Oslo City Artist’s Prize and Neshornprisen.
They Call Me the Wolf (2022) is his third novel, and was awarded the Booksellers’ Prize.
As a young woman, Åsta Petersen-Cooper left Norway with a desire to put her former life behind her.
She brimmed with dreams of an international lifestyle of languages, literature and fascinating conversations, and of a happiness in which she could both love and be loved. She’s now 73, living in Warsaw, and in a faltering marriage with a British diplomat. She suffers a stroke which seriously impairs her ability to speak. All she’s left with is the Norwegian of her childhood, which no one around her understands, and far too much time to wonder why life never turned out the way it was meant to.
A Minute’s Silence is a novel about recognition and identity, about which memories live within us and which ones disappear, and about wanting to escape from your own background – and perhaps also from yourself.
«Captivating! [...] Following Cecilie Enger’s writings is a joy, this time she delivers a moving novel with characters we believe in and a story that draws us in. […] well written, well thought through, a fascinating universe well executed.»
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2023
192 pages
Cecilie Enger (b. 1963) made her debut in 1994 with the novel Necessity, and has published a number of critically acclaimed novels since. For her breakthrough novel Mother’s Gifts (2013), she was nominated to The Booksellers’ Prize and the Critics’ Prize. Cecilie Enger lives in Asker.
It’s the year 1366 according to the Iranian solar calendar, and 1987 according to the Gregorian, and I am seven years old, as old as the war against Iraq, on the run in a little village with no electricity near Khorramabad.
Shining Dead is based on the author’s own experiences from the eight-year Iran-Iraq war as well as the changes that occurred in Iranian society in the years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In perceptive and pictorial style, Shafieian describes a dramatic childhood in which war against Iran’s neighbour is superseded by war against the Iranian people’s own rulers. There are vivid, intricate descriptions of the atmosphere in the cities in the wake of chemical bombardment, alongside accounts of events in left-wing radical circles, of arrests and executions of intellectuals and dissidents, all of it experienced from a child’s perspective. Shining Dead is a novel about memory, about belonging, the home of one’s childhood, and deep love for family and friends.
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2022
216 pages
Nominated for the Norwegian Critics’ Prize 2022
“’Time heals no wounds’, writes Mazdak Shafieian, ‘it multiplies them’. Time and its workings on life and memory is the pivotal point around which Shafieian’s novel turns: Who is that little boy who grew up in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war? What did he experience, how does it impact him – and how does one find a literary form for the experiences of war? In an unusually beautiful, perceptive prose, Shafieian turns to remembrance with the method of an archeologist; what he digs out, is a novel of outstanding quality [...].”
Statement from the jury of the Critics’ Prize 2022
Mazdak Shafieian (b. 1980 in Iran) lives in Oslo. He studied at the Academy of Literary Arts in Hordaland and holds a degree in literature from the University of Bergen. He debuted as a writer in 2006 with the poetry collection Pitfall Black. He has also been co-editor of the publication series Au petit garage and for the journal Teologi, and has spent time on Vinduet’s editorial board.
One’s Own Children is about ambitions and disappointments, pretensions and revelations.
It’s June and Anja and her boyfriend Pål are on their way to the smallholding in Sweden that Anja still co-owns with her ex-husband Ivar. It’s going to be a weekend of hard work – the cladding needs to be cleaned and painted. Ivar and his partner Solveig are there too, as are all the children.
One’s Own Children is about ambitions and disappointments, pretensions and revelations. About our search for belonging and meaning, for intoxication and transgression. About children and the power one has – and doesn’t have –over them; about responsibility and a longing for freedom. And about the joy and love that arrives in flashes, almost at random.
«Trude Marstein is a master at creating characters who are mildly unpleasant. The title of her new novel, One’s Own Children, immediately sparks expectations about the conspiratorial cliché ‘my children/other people’s children’. Marstein’s ability to capture modern lifestyle problems – in this case stepchildren and stepparents – is highly relatable.»
Dagbladet
«Superb, relentless family drama. [...] The reader is left on tenterhooks as Trude Marstein gathers the modern family for a weekend of work at their smallholding.» NRK
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2022
336 pages
Foreign Sales: Gyldendal Denmark
Trude Marstein (b. 1973) was awarded the Critics’ Prize as well as the PO Enquist Prize for Doing Good (2006), which confirmed her prominent position among younger Norwegian authors. Born in 1973, she grew up in the small town Tønsberg on the coast of the Oslofjord. She received the Tarjei Vesaas’ Debutant Prize for Strong Hunger, Sudden Nausea (1998) and has written several novels as well as a book for children and a number of essays.
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2023
There’s little love lost between between the three siblings Dyveke, Benedikte and Steffen, and apart from their absent drunk of a father, they have nothing in common either.
But when their father is on his deathbed, the three siblings are torn away from the chaos of their everyday lives and forced to contend with each other.
But are we duty-bound to give care just because we’re family?
And do we spend the rest of our lives searching for what was missing from our childhoods?
Is blood always thicker than water?
Off the Cuff is a life-affirming novel about loyalty and loss, forgiveness and solace – about which truths count when our memories don’t match up.
Heidi Linde (b. 1973) has been a rising star since her debut novel Under the Table (2002) made it to the main selection in Norway’s major book club, but her big breakthrough came with her third novel, Yes, We Can! (2011). She is also one of few plot driven women writers to traverse the gender gap; the reviewers obviously see her as a writer for both men and women (and compare her to giants like Nick Hornby and Jonathan Frantzen).
Former stand-up comedian John Kaupang travels back to the island of Skatøy to bury his father.
His father, a beloved doctor, hanged himself in his office. There were many years of hostility between John and his father, and during the preparations for the funeral, letters appear that his father wrote about his life on Skatøy. John begins to investigate what his father really got up to and who he was behind his irreproachable humanitarian façade. The more he digs, the more he begins to discover a man he never knew, ruled by forces he never divulged to his son. Meanwhile, the funeral is approaching. John has a strained relationship with his family and other islanders – relationships that only become more difficult following his father’s death.
Revelation to John is a novel about people who switch between rejecting and clinging on to one another, and about what you should have known – and may never know –about those closest to you.
«He has a genuine narrative voice, characterised by detailed observations, well-drawn characters and effective descriptions of the environment. The plot, the conflicts, the expressed confrontations and the unspoken tensions between the characters are told in such a way that all you can do is turn the next page.»
Dagbladet
Publisher: Kolon
Publication year: 2023
240 pages
Jonny Halberg (b. 1962) made his debut with the short story collection Transition to Tertiary in 1989. Halberg had his breakthrough with the novel The Deluge (2000), for which he received a number of awards.
Together with Pål Sletaune he has written the scripts for the feature films Junk Mail and You Really Got Me.
Lene Berg was nine years old when her father, the writer and film director Arnljot Berg, was arrested in Paris accused of the murder of his third wife, Evelyne Zammit. This dramatic childhood memory is the starting point for From Father.
In From Father, Lene Berg examines her father’s life and fate by mixing her own memories and imagination with factual elements such as letters, psychiatric reports, unpublished and published texts, court documents, etc. From Father thus turns into an encounter between two artists, one living, one dead; between a daughter and a father, a woman and a man and between present-day Norway and the nation in which Arnljot Berg lived and worked. The result is an astonishing and moving portrait of a sensitive and talented person, and at the same time an unusual portrayal of a family.
«Clever novel about the act of remembrance.»
Publisher: Kolon
Publication year: 2023
224 pages
Subjekt
«Let me state right away that Lene Berg’s prose is wonderful. In addition to glimmering prose and clever composition, Fra far has everything one might wish for in a modern bohemian novel, in a novel of the arts, a crime novel with a twist of the humanities, one with all of Europe set as its stage.»
AdresseavisenLene Berg, (b. 1965), is a film director and artist living in Oslo and Berlin. She was trained at the Swedish Institute of the Dramatic Arts in Stockholm, and has directed a number of films and had exhibitions at home and abroad. Berg’s autobiographical film False Belief premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019. She won the Elephant Prize at the Momentum Art Biennale in 2000 and has received the Lorck Schive Art Prize.
Heart Undercover contains nine essays on art, literature, film, inspiration and writing.
Through occasionally personal, poetological research and readings of authors and artists such as Edvard Munch, Nikolai Astrup, Mary Ruefle, Claire-Louise Bennett and Andrei Tarkovsky, the texts revolve around literary transformation points, abstraction and realism, creation and re-creation. If Heart Undercover is an associative, momentary memoir about, for example, standing up to your knees in ice-cold dirt, it is also about work in the first-person singular, about dramaturgy, and about comedy.
In her third collection of essays, Gunnhild Øyehaug delivers a rich, thought-provoking and poetic reflection on literature’s capacity for both fantastic transformation and for holding on tight to something imagined, lived and experienced.
«Gunnhild Øyehaug writes in images, via detours, and with observations that may at first glance appear utterly farfetched, but which she makes consummate sense of.»
The best books of 2022
«Few writers deserve the cliché “distinctive” more than Øyehaug. Undercover Heart is a wild and razor-sharp collection of texts about art.»
The best books of 2022
«Øyehaug writes keenly on art, existence, creation and inspiration. Big topics, but these essays are deliciously down-toearth, funny, elucidating – and at times moving. What about hunting the hallways of the Louisiana Museum, only to be captivated along the way by something else entirely than why you were there in the first place? Even though you thought you were long since done with Giacometti?»
Favourite books 2022
«Øyehaug writes sparklingly funny and fabulously composed essays, as usual.»
Critics’ favourites 2022
Publisher: Kolon
Publication year: 2022
112 pages
Gunnhild Øyehaug (b. 1975) lives in Bergen. She teaches at the Academy of Creative Writing in Hordaland and has been an editor of the literary journals Kraftsentrum and Vagant, and a literary critic in Morgenbladet and Klassekampen. She made her debut with the poetry Collection Slave of the Blueberry in 1998. After a short story collection (Knots, 2004) and an essay collection (Chair and Ecstasy, 2006), she had her great breakthrough with her first novel, Wait, Blink in 2008.
The fifth book in the Jomsviking series.
Torstein Herse is back from his campaign in England and has settled in Jomsborg with Sigrid. But there is discord in the air. One day a messenger arrives from Erling Skjalgsson, the man known as the King of Ryge. Olaf Haraldsson, the youngblood who served under the mighty Torkjell Høye in England, is threatening the old chieftains and petty kings and demanding Norway for his realm. The King of Ryge asks for the support of the Jomsvikings in the fight against the new pretender to the throne. But young Olaf’s audacity knows no bounds. Soon Jomsborg itself will come under attack, and a new warrior will ascend to the chieftain’s throne. Torstein will sail north, now accompanied by his eldest son, and witness great, proud men bowing to Olav Griske’s might. A rebellion will spring forth where Torstein least expects it – a rebellion that will lay open Olaf’s cruelty and lust for power to the whole world.
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2022
496 pages
Foreign Sales
Sweden, Lind & Co
This is the fifth book in the Jomsviking series about Torstein and his family. Here, we are taken into the conflicts surrounding Olaf Haraldsson, later known as Saint Olaf, and we are given an insight into a age when Norway went from being a society with a council of chieftains and local autonomy to a monarchy with centralised power. Through Torstein’s eyes, we see the old days and everything he knows to be good and right coming under threat. At the same time, Torstein himself will threaten Olaf right at the heart of his power – because Torstein wants to retake Vingulmork, the region he was promised dominion over before it was robbed from him.
Bjørn Andreas Bull-Hansen (b. 1972) debuted with his short story
From the Western Forest in 1996. Since then, he has written a number of books across a variety of genres. He had his international breakthrough with his novel Jomsviking (2017), which is the first in a sweeping historical series from the Viking Age. Throughout his authorship, Bull Hansen has become known for his gripping stories and powerful tales of human destiny.
Wassim has been cleaning toilets and corridors in the office building in Brugata for 15 years. He is unmarried and childless, lives in a dormitory and lives in the shadow of his successful brother. But one day he is mistaken for the private investigator Kolbeinstveit, and the misunderstanding gives him a chance to become someone else.
Wassim’s stain removal expertise, universal keys and Norwegian-Pakistani networks become crucial tools when he becomes entangled in the art and financial elite in Oslo, and the hunt for an ancient parrot and a fake Picasso. And was it the case that the famous opera singer Jacob Borg actually took his own life?
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2023
Zahid Ali (b. 1976) is a Norwegian comedian of Pakistani origin. He made his debut as a stand-up comedian in 1999, and has since participated as presenter, actor and writer in a number of major film, TV and stage productions. Swabber – One True Sleuth will be published in 2023 and is his first novel.
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2023
352 pages
The second book in the Gabriel Fjell series.
A little boy is found murdered near a hiking trail in Haugesund. He has been beaten to death with a rock and thrown down a steep slope. The brutality of the violence against the defenceless child shocks even seasoned police officers. Hours and days pass without anyone reporting the boy missing, and despite the fact that police superintendent Gabriel Fjell and his team are working around the clock, they are unable to identify him. Gradually they uncover a story darker, bleaker and more dangerous than anyone could have imagined.
Dog Days is a profound crime novel about power and powerlessness in intimate relationships, about violence and manipulation, about what grinds us down and how even our humanity can be put at stake when the ground crumbles beneath our feet.
«Painfully thrilling, realistic and highly relevant. Tangen sheds light on domestic violence and psychological terror in close relations, describing the victims with great insight and no judgement, as well as drawing a clear picture of psychopaths/sociopaths and their characteristics. … And the plot - yes, I was entirely fooled and did not guess all the answers. Eagerly awaiting the next book of the series.»
The criminal book world
Geir Tangen (b. 1970) is from Øystese in Hardanger, but has lived in Haugesund since 1996.
He trained as a general education teacher and has worked in lower secondary schools since 1996. He has also worked as a freelance journalist for radio, TV and newspapers since 1990, and writes short stories in addition to his crime novels.
A fourteen-year-old girl is found hanging in the woods. It soon becomes clear that she has been taking part in an online game spreading among the city’s youth – a game in which the final challenge is to take your own life.
For his first assignment as lead investigator, superintendent Gabriel Fjell faces a terrifying task: He has to find whoever is behind the game and, more importantly, prevent more young people from taking their own lives. But when there’s no perpetrator, how can he stop them?
And how can he stop the young when they are intent on hurting themselves?
“Despite my high expectations of Geir Tangen’s new crime novel, I found myself blown away.” tinesundal.blogspot.com
“A cracking, well-written crime novel that proved one hell of a start to a new year of reading!”
bjornebok.bloggnorge.com
“This book was so hard to put down, and I read it in record time. If you like quivering tension interspersed with some tough descriptions, you should definitely read this!”
bokblogger.com
“The author writes with a steady pen. The story is easy to read, without too much ‘irrelevant chit-chat’. This is a new genre for Tangen, and I think he really hits the mark. An excellent book that I recommend without hesitation – but not for the faint of heart!”
hverdagsnett.no
“Tangen has chosen to explore an important subject in this thriller. A topic that remains taboo, despite the fact that waves of suicides sometimes take place at various places around the country.”
medbokogpalett.blogspot.com
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2021
384 pages
Foreign Sales:
Denmark, Straarup & Co
Italia, Giunti Editore
The second book in the series about Oda Krogh.
Estate lawyer Oda Krohg’s task is as simple as it is prestigious: To follow the clear instructions of an enduring power of attorney to distribute the estate of a renowned lawyer and former war hero.
The job is a blessing for Oda and Reidar’s ailing law practice, and will give them both respect and a growing clientele. For a long while, everything seems to be going well, if only it wasn’t for Oda’s insatiable curiosity – the very same curiosity that nudges her into doing a little research about a painting that makes a strange appearance. The painting has a hidden backstory buried since the days of the war – for good reason, as it turns out. And wherever there are deep secrets, there are also lies and deadly deceit.
Oda and Reidar are slowly drawn so far into the drama that they too become a part of it. Perhaps that was precisely the point all along…
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2023
Pages: 187
Ingrid Berglund (b. 1966) holds a Master’s degree in economics and finance. Her background spans from working as a bartender in London and an auxiliary nurse in Australia to being a financial analyst at Chase Manhattan Bank and Norsk Hydro. She grew up in Sørreisa and Svelvik, and now lives in Høvik. Ingrid is the sister of crime writer Anita Berglund.
Nominated to the Rivertonprize 2023. The shady dealings of big pharma, a life-ordeath pursuit, and an unsolved disappearance from the past culminate in an explosive encounter in the epic landscape of Northern Norway.
They’re an odd couple, the young estate lawyer Oda Krogh and her aging assistant, Reidar Simonsen. Both of them have been ditched by their significant other, and their joint investigative practice is a not entirely successful attempt to get back on their feet again.
Then a dying woman arrives at the door with one last wish. Against their better instincts, they take on the assignment: to find the woman’s son, who is said to have drowned five years earlier. The only thing Oda and Reidar have to go on are four shells someone has sent the doomed mother.
As they dig into the past, they discover more suspicious deaths. They also see disturbing indications that the pharmaceutical industry has blood on its hands. The search for the truth quickly attracts the attention of individuals who only become more dangerous the more the pandemic spreads – and soon it is Oda and Børre who are being hunted down.
«She’s finally back. [...] Berglund is one of few women writing crime fiction in Norway, and is without doubt an uncommon talent. I was elated to learn that the author was making a return with a new crime story ten years after the last one. [...] A long-awaited comeback.»
Randaberg 24
«Where have you been all my life, Ingrid Berglund?»
Mariann Sæter Tokle (Book blogger)
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2022
336 pages
«I’m totally engrossed in The Black Swan. WHAT A BOOK! There’s something about the language and atmosphere that captivates me [...] The author writes so well that the characters seem to step out from the pages of the book!»
Liv Gade (Book inspirator)
«‘A very good, original story that captivates from the first word. You’ve got to read this.»
Anne Lise Johannesen (Book blogger)
The Royal Kidnapping is a furious, feisty and action-packed story about resourcefulness and raw power, but above all else about heroism and boundless fatherly love.
Publisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2023
368 pages
Skaugum, early spring 2023, time of day 4.41 a.m.: four masked men kill the Crown Prince’s bodyguards and abduct his daughter, the next in line to the throne. All of Norway is put on high alert. Evidence soon shows that forces from Russia are behind the kidnapping, and the Norwegian emergency services turn to legendary police detective Frans Nansen. He has grief and a little girl of his own to deal with; since he lost his wife in a fire a few years earlier, he has been battling his inner demons. It isn’t until the Crown Prince himself approaches him as head of state and as a father that Nansen accepts that he must take on this impossible mission: to cross the northern border alone, locate the Princess and – most difficult of all – bring her back to Norwegian territory, alive.
«Police investigator Frans Nansen will save Norway’s heir to the throne. The bodies are strewn about! James Bond and Rambo are reduced to Boy Scouts! [...] Crazy and wacky!»
NettavisenUlrik Høisæther (b. 1982) made his debut as a crime author with the crime novel Pokerface, which soon was followed by Clean Hands. He works within finance, now for the largest Bank in Norway. The Last Safe Deposit Box is his first novel about Chief Inspector Frans Nansen.
When geologists discover valuable mineral deposits in the mountains north of Svalbard, superpowers Russia and China enter into a secret pact to share the riches. But first they need to ensure that Norway loses sovereignty over the archipelago. Up there, the community is shockingly vulnerable: A simple act of sabotage against the single cable that connects Svalbard to the outside world is all it takes for the population to be effectively cut off from all communication. This way, an undeclared Russian invasion can be launched without the world looking on as a witness.
Intelligence officers Per Henriksen and Tora Fjell are sent to Svalbard in secret. They join a deadly race – and the victors will take control over Svalbard’s resources for all time.
«Øystein Bogen could soon become Norway’s king of thrillers if he keeps writing like this! [...] This is a thriller to beat all-comers – and if you’re asking me, with The Provocation, Bogen has written one of the best thrillers of all time.»
Randaberg24
«In an efficient narrative style, Bogen gives an astonishingly convincing account of how the paramilitary Wagner Group, disguised as security guards for a Russian mining company, quickly and effectively succeed in gaining control of Svalbard.»
Bergens TidendePublisher: Gyldendal
Publication year: 2023
352 pages
Øystein Bogen (b. 1969) has many years of experience as a foreign journalist and is very familiar with Russia. He made his debut with The Zeta Virus The Provocation is his second novel.
Unn walks too far into the frozen waterfall, and throughout one long winter, Siss fights the frost of her own mind. The girls feel early on that there are ties between them that they can’t explain. They are two of one, and one in two.
This is a novel about awakening emotions, about being alone and feeling like a stranger in the world, about being a child and standing on the threshold of an adult consciousness, and about the dark borderland of the mind where numerous forces, dreams ands desires struggle for power.
The Ice Palace (1963) won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1964, and represents Tarjei Vesaas at the peak of his creative powers.
Publisher: Gyldendal144 pages
Tarjei Vesaas was a modernist who maintained a degree of technical experimentation throughout his work. He is regarded as one of Scandinavia’s foremost twentiethcentury writers and was the first Norwegian to win the Nordic Council Literature Prize.
Tarjei Vesaas was born on a farm in Vinje in 1897. He was the oldest of three sons, and as the oldest he was entitled to inherit the farm. But Vesaas understood early that he was set out to become a writer. Vesaas started writing poems and articles for newspapers at the age of 23. The year after, he won a prize for one of his poems, which led him to send some of his work to a publisher. For his collection of short stories, The Winds (Vindane, 1950), he won the Venice Prize in 1953, which resulted in his international break-through. In 1964, he became the first Norwegian to receive the Nordic Council Literature Prize.
His novels have been translated into 28 languages.
The story of the friendship between two young girls.
an hour than a wise man can answer in seven years.
The Birds (1957) might be Tarjei Vesaas’ masterpiece. No other character has been portrayed with as much care and empathy as Mattis. Helpless in everyday life and useless as a worker, Mattis, in some ways, still understands more than the sharper ones.
Nature reveals secrets to Mattis. He can decipher the language of birds. He can read the letters that the woodcock writers to him with its beak and feet. And he can articulate the deepest questions of life: Why are things the way they are? he asks the friendly farmer’s wife who offers him coffee when he has again failed in doing the work he has been asked to do.
No-one can offer any answers, but the author tells the story in such a way that the reader comes to share his empathy for Mattis, while still understanding Mattis’ sister Hege and all those who want to help Mattis, but who can’t reach all the way in to him.
In 1967, The Birds was made into a film by the Polish director Witold Leszczynski.
Publisher: Gyldendal
208 pages
An everlasting existential study of solitude, proving that a fool may ask more questions in
Cora Sandel, pseudonym for Sara Fabricius (1880-1974), is one of Norway’s greatest authors. In 1926, at the age of 46, she published her debut novel Alberta and Jacob, and it would take her thirteen years to finish the trilogy about Alberta with the novels Alberta and Freedom (1931) and Alberta Alone (1939).
Publisher: Gyldendal
782 pages
Alberta and Jacob (1926), the first volume of the trilogy, introduces Alberta Selmer, one of the 20th century’s great anti-heroines: Imaginative and intelligent, trapped in a stiflingly provincial town in the north of Norway, she is a misfit whose only affinity is for her extrovert brother Jacob. Her mother makes no attempt to conceal her disappointment at her daughter’s social failings, and Alberta is desperate to get away. When Jacob escapes to a life at sea, Alberta’s rebellion, though muted and ineffectual, begins to grow.
In Alberta and Freedom (1931) Alberta escapes from her life in Norway to seek out Paris, a city where the bohemians will never die, where there is absinthe and endless talk of Cubism. But Paris is not all she imagined. Although she begins to write pieces for newspapers, Alberta’s self-esteem is low, and her inexperience makes her prey to the casual approaches of predatory men. Relationships, when they happen, are neither easy nor happy. Feeling her talent beginning to suffer and her freedom stagnating, Alberta faces a struggle to survive.
In Alberta Alone (1939), Alberta, now mistress to Sivert, is living in Paris with their small son. While Sivert is involved in a liaison with a Swedish painter, Alberta falls in love with Pierre, a writer just returned from the First World War. With subtlety and insight, Cora Sandel depicts the gradual corrosion of a relationship, against the background of the aftermath of the Great War.
“She writes in a low key, with exact domestic detail, unhurried, lucid and sure. The picture she builds up is unforgettable.”
Daily Telegraph
“She has a place to herself among the finest contemporary writing.”
Guardian
At Krane’s pastry shop in a northern Norwegian town, two people, the world-weary Katinka Stordal and the roustabout Bowler Hat, each lonely outcasts in their own ways, have a chance encounter.
They both feel some sense of connection, and begin to open up to each other, speaking about their lives and the coincidences and anxiety that has led them awry. Cora Sandel sketches the small-town environment around Krane’s pastry shop with a masterful touch, and vividly and believably brings the characters to life with humour, precision and a deep understanding of human nature.
Cora Sandel (1880–1974) is highly regarded nationally and internationally as a unique voice in Norwegian literature. With the Alberta trilogy, published between 1926 and 1939, she cemented her position as one of our finest novelists.
Born Sara Fabricius in Christiania (now Oslo) and raised in Tromsø, Sandel left home to pursue a career as a painter, living in France and Italy (mainly Paris) for 15 years. Short on money, she started submitting travel letters and short stories to various Norwegian newspapers to scrape a living. One of these stories piqued the interest of the publishing director at Gyldendal, who encouraged her to write a novel. When Alberta and Jacob was published under a pseudonym in 1926, Sandel was 46, recently divorced, and living in Sweden with her young son. The novel was an immediate success, and sold surprisingly well for a debut, making it possible for Sandel to earn a living from her writing.
Anne Cathrine Eng anne.cathrine.eng@gyldendal.no Foreign Rights Director
Nina Pedersen nina.pedersen@gyldendal.no Literary Agent
Kirsti Kristoffersen kirsti.kristoffersen@gyldendal.no Film & TV Rights
//
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