THRILLER/CRIME

SWAN SONG

Original title: Svanesang Publisher: Gyldendal, 2020 Category: Crime/Thriller Pages: 300 pages

AWARDS

2013: Nominated for the Riverton Prize 2013: Nominated for the Young People's Critics' Prize 2013: Nominated for the P2 Listeners' Prize 2011: Prix Jean Monnet des Jeunes Européens (for I Will Show You Fear) 2008: The P2 Listeners' Novel Prize 2008: The Young People's Critics' Prize 2008: Nominated for the Brage Prize 2008: Nominated for the Booksellers' Prize 2004: The Oslo Prize 2004: Nominated for The Brage Prize 1998: Nominated for The Aristeion Prize 1997: Anders Jahre’s Prize for Young Artists Swan song is an intense psychological thriller from a super-privileged family in

Bærum, Norway's richest municipality. In a hallucinatory style, a world of wealth and harmony is transformed into nerve-wrecking horror.

Real estate king Adrian Svane disappears on a hike in the mountains while his friend and colleague is found brutally killed in the same area. Adrian's three grown children are all left in despair and wonder.

When the youngest son, the journalist Jon Svane, reveals questionable business practices in the family's own company and unexpected connections to the heroin trade, the situation becomes threatening. The aging heroin baron Ernst Damm makes a surprising financial claim against the family and forces them to realize that Adrian may not have run the business as cleanly as they previously thought.

At the same time, Jon is diagnosed with a serious illness. He feels that only rage can make him well and it gives him a surprising drive to find his missing father and take up the fight against Ernst Damm and his brutal helpers. But there are things in the family history that constantly floats to the surface and little by little the strongly pressured Jon discovers that the family history is a cover for something far more serious.

Swan Song is a nerve-wracking psychological thriller about paranoia and dysfunctional family relationships, but it is also a story of fatherhood, about being a father, missing a father, finding your father again. It's about forbidden emotions, jealousy, rage and love. About not feeling being understood. And it is also about genetics. What have we inherited from our parents, and to what extent does it depend on who we actually become?

Nikolaj Frobenius

Nikolaj Frobenius (b.1965) is a novelist and screenwriter known for his talent in juxtaposing the past and present, fact and fiction. Frobenius’ novels have been translated into numerous languages and he has since his international literary breakthrough in 1996 received many international awards.