Gyldendal Agency - Foreign Rights Guide

GYLDENDAL AGENCY

Foreign Rights Guide | Spring 2024 Fiction

Gyldendal Agency

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:

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Postal Address:

P.o box 6860, St. Olavs plass 0130 Oslo, Norway

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INTO THIN AIR

Ørjan Karlsson

Into Thin Air is a new North Norwegian noir series featuring the midnight sun and dark secrets in the depths of winter.

Nineteen-year-old Iselin Hanssen disappears in Bodø’s popular hiking area, and suspicion quickly falls on her boyfriend. For investigator Jakob Weber, the case seems clear-cut, even though there are tiny, barely visible hints that Iselin lived parts of her life beneath the radar of both family and friends. The events take on a whole new meaning when another woman disappears under similar circumstances, this time on Røst, the island furthest out into the wild ocean. Rumors that an unknown killer is on the loose begin to spread, terrifying the locals. Then Jakob discovers that this isn’t the first time young women have vanished without a trace in this region.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2022

Pages: 336

Foreign Sales: Netherlands, Uitgeverij Marmer Germany, Pendragon UK, Orenda Books Bulgaria, Izida

«Karlsson writes efficiently, which suits both the crime and thriller genres very well, and there is a lot of warm humour and evocative descriptions of nature and characters, all of which act as a much-needed counterbalance to all the gruesomeness. The story has good momentum throughout, and it was difficult to put it down.»

Altaposten

«Could someone be so kind as to make this into a TV series? Because the combination of spectacular nature and brutish murder doesn’t come much better than this...»

Avisa Nordland

«... an atmospheric, exciting and well-executed crime novel.»

VG

THE NIGHT TRAVELS ALONE

Ørjan Karlsson

Kjerringøy: A hiker arrives at a cabin that isn’t marked on the map. Outside, six ravens hang in cages, all in a row. As he approaches, a figure comes towards him, a faceless man. Down at Kjerringøy’s trading post, Tuva Mjelde and two friends are taking an ice bath. One of them gets stuck in something in the water. They manage to pull her free, but something else drifts to the surface: the body of Emilio, Tuva’s former lover. And a few days later, Tuva is found dead. Around the same time, the young Veronika Paulsen is found dead in Bodø, and someone has attempted to make it look like suicide. Soon investigators Jakob Weber and Noora Yun Sande will come face to face with a wickedness the likes of which they have never encountered. This is the second book in the series about the investigators Jakob Weber and Noora Yun Sande and their colleagues in Nordland police district.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2023

Pages: 320

Foreign Sales:

The Netherlands, Uitgeverijv Marmer Germany, Pendragon UK, Orenda Books

Bulgaria, Izida

Ørjan N. Karlsson (b. 1970) grew up in Bodø. A sociologist by trade, he received officer training in the army and has taken part in overseas missions. He has worked in the Defence Ministry and is now a departmental manager in the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection. He has written a large number of thrillers, sci-fi novels and crime novels for adults.

WHAT’S YOURS TO KEEP

Inger Johanne Øen

An ill grandmother forces the police inspector Silja Frost to return home to Åsa. In the small town of her childhood, time seems to have been standing still. Friends, neighbors, and the parties are all the same – and Leo still possesses a dangerous attraction. Siljas old friend, Ann, is still missing, after disappearing on her way home from a party 19 years ago. The trauma of this event has cast lingering shadows over Åsa. Then, the deceased body of a woman is found on a shut-down farm. It turns out to be Ann. The investigation stirs uneasiness in town, and old grievances resurface. For Silja, things turn personal – to such an extent that several people want her off the case. The closer she gets to finding answers, the more dangerous hunting the killer becomes. Could it be someone she knows?

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2024

Pages: 400

Inger Johanne Øen (b. 1971) comes from Åsa and now lives in Hallingby, Ringerike. What’s Yours to Keep is her debut novel.

Randaberg24

Ringerikes Blad

Nettavisen

EASY PREY

Agnes Lovise Matre

Agnes Lovise Matre (b. 1966) works as a teacher in Haugesund and has previously worked as a freelance journalist. In 2020, Matre was awarded the Silver Dagger Award for the novel Ice Cold.

«Dark, rural crime novel about youth, sex, and drugs […] Agnes Lovise Matre is experiencing great success with her crime novels about the local police chief Bengt Alvsaker in Øystese. The fourth book of the series successfully explores how parents and teenagers live in separate worlds […] a crime novel that rises well above the run-of-the-mill.»

Bergens Tidende

A young boy is found killed in Øystese. At the same time, a fifteen years old girl is reported missing. She failed to return home in the evening, and outside winter storms are raging. Airports and mountain roads are closed. The small town is effectively isolated. The murder investigation and the search for the missing girl has the local police department stretched way too thin. Slowly, a picture is pieced together of a youth environment where young girls sell nudes and vulnerable teenage girls use drugs and hang out with grown men. Chief Inspector Bengt Alvsaker heads an investigation where the leads are hidden away in families where hiding one’s own sins is more important than caring for one’s close ones. Easy Prey is the fourth book in the series about Chief Inspector Bengt Alvsaker.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2024

Pages: 368

THE CORPSE STONE

Marit Reiersgård

Marit Reiersgård (b. 1965) has trained her hand at writing short stories for ten years, and has published books for children and young adults. Her debut as a crime writer came in 2012 with Tall Snow. In 2014 followed The Girl With No Heart, which got shortlisted for the prestigious Riverton Prize. The Corpse Stone is her fifth crime novel.

Police investigators Bitte Røed and Verner Jacobsen are finally back!

In an apartment in Drammen, a man is found dead, locked in a rose-painted chest from the 19th century. The victim was an avid hunter, and the hunting party he belonged to turns out to have ties to severe environmental crime. The investigation unveils a tragic family story spanning generations. The investigators Bitte Røed and Verner Jacobsen soon glimpse a strong motif and fear that other lives are in danger. Simultaneously, their mutual attraction leads to shame and a sense of guilt, as Verner is married and soon to be a father. It all ends in an ice-cold drama in a tiny town in the Hallingdal valley.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2024

Pages: 368

PREVIOUS TITLES IN THE SERIES

TALL SNOW

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2012

Pages: 320

PARADISE HILL

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2016

Pages: 400

THE GIRL WITH NO HEART

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2014

Pages: 336

WHAT THE DEAD KNOW

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2018

Pages: 320

UNDER THE PAVING-STONES, THE BEACH!

Johan Harstad

a conference on long-term management of nuclear waste, when he is contacted by an American who surprisingly seems to have knowledge of both the suburb Ingmar grew up in and his childhood friends. Shortly after, Ingmar receives a phone call from one of them, the first time in nineteen years, explaining to him the importance of them

Publisher:

Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2024

Pages: 950

Foreign Sales:

Netherlands, Podium Germany, Ullstein Denmark, Gutkind

returning to Stavanger to sort out something that happened back in the nineties. These two coincidental events lead Ingmar into reflecting on who they used to be, how they found each other, and how they found that house next to the decommissioned Kubikel Reactor, which eventually drove them in different directions and set in motion things that no longer can be stopped.

UnderThePaving-Stones,TheBeach! revolves around the discovery of a pavingstone-shaped artifact that can allegedly create the illusion of experiencing a lifetime in just over seven minutes, with enormous consequences for anyone who comes into contact with it. Partly set in Stavanger at the end of the nineties, but with significant

Johan Harstad (b. 1979) is a Norwegian author and playwright. He made his debut in 2001 with the short prose collection Herfra blir du bare eldre (From Here on in You Just Get Older) and have since published collections of short stories, plays, a YA novel, as well as the novels Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? (2005), Hässelby (2007) and Max, Mischa & The Tet Offensive (2015). The latter, which has received overwhelming acclaim in Norway, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, was awarded the Dutch Europese Literatuurprijs in 2018. The production of the play Osv. (Etc.) at the National Theatre, where Harstad was the in-house playwright in 2009, was awarded the Ibsen Prize. He has also been awarded the Hunger Prize for his «younger, eminent» literary work, and the prestigious Svenska Akademiens Dobloug Award for his authorship. His books have been published in over 30 countries. Harstad lives in Oslo. temporal and geographical detours all the way back to the 60’s and to places such as the Soviet Union, Berlin, Iceland, Shanghai and the remote island of Tristan da Cunha, and populated by, among other things, suburban youth in search of the next industrial ventilation fan to keep warm by, fathers trying to understand themselves and their surroundings, Cold War spies with seriously wavering loyalty, Norwegian teenage Zapatistas and marihuana wholesalers of dubious mental health, young lovers and ham radio fathers, all widowed, plus old school seamen, school, Icelandic eco-terrorists, suicidal single mothers and self-absorbed clinic directors, board members of the USTaiwanese container shipping company Mee-Kwon, an adventurous meteorologist from the Stavanger suburb Forus and an astrophysicist with an urgent need to

lecture on non-professional subjects, and with guest appearances by the likes of Andrei Tarkovskyu and Erich Mielke, the novel explores the idea that perhaps time was never on our side to begin with and the question of what the consequences would be, if everything didn’t have to end for us all one day.

Part novel about growing up outside the center of everything, part paranoid spy story, part protest novel, part sci-fi, part story about the powers of the atom, about regret and wishing for a second chance, about the impermanence of everything, the half-life of life and all this damned waiting, for life to begin, for things to pass, waiting for the right one, waiting for death and waiting in vain. This is a novel about Ingmar, Jonatan and Peter. And Ebba.

EVERYTHING I FEAR HAS ALREADY HAPPENED Wencke Mühleisen

Wencke Mühleisen (b. 1953) is a researcher in gender and media at the University of Stavanger. As a performance artist, writer and researcher she has worked with our cultural and media-formed understanding of sex and sexuality.

What is a woman to do after being left by her partner in her late middle age?

The first spring spent alone, she thinks of nature as beauty wasted on a dead soul, and stays alive out of sheer politeness. She can’t bear the idea of spending the rest of her life without asomeone to curl up to. She makes dating profiles on several apps, the only remaining arena for meeting people in the time of the pandemic. At the same time, she shrinks at the thought of going to bed with an unknown, imperfect body, to showcase her own decline and expose herself to a stranger.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag Publication year: 2024 Pages: 192

«This is a deeply existential novel about being an older, abandoned, longing woman. The book is raw, frisky, and rebellious. And, the way I read it, wistful.»

Sissel Gran, psychologist and couples’ therapist

«If sexuality and old age is a topic not often discussed, this novel contributes to right that wrong. Mühleisen’s laconic sense of humour fits the topic well, and the story balances elegantly between the hopeful and the tragicomic.»

Klassekampen

ONE’S OWN CHILDREN

Trude Marstein

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.

«In her best, bravest and saddest book to date, Trude Marstein is heading towards a level of her own in Norwegian contemporary literature.» Aftenposten

«Superb, relentless family drama.»

NRK

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 part- ner Solveig are there too, as are all the children.

One’s Own Children is about ambitions and disappoint- ments, 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.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2022

Pages: 336

Foreign Sales

Denmark, Gyldendal Denmark

Hungary, Magvető

LATE IN THE DAY

Kristin Vego

Kristin Vego (b. 1991) is a DanishNorwegian author from Aarhus, Denmark, living in Oslo. She made her debut in 2021 with the short story collection Look for One Last Time at All Beaty. The book was published in Danish in 2022. For her debut, she was awarded the Tarjei Vesaas Debut Prize in Norway and the Bogforum Debut Prize in Denmark. Vego is a former editor of the literary magazine Vagant and a literary critic in Dagbladet Information. Late in the Day is her first novel.

How am I to go about talking of this period?

The little pockets of time where there were no other witnesses: These are the ones I want to gather, like jellyfish, and lift up for the light to shine through. To observe the threads in there.

Johanne rents a room in a white house in the countryside. Almost without noticing, she slips into a relationship with Mikael, the man who lives there. It develops into a love lasting a lifetime. With the relationship comes Mikael’s daughter, his ex-wife, the characteristic landscape surrounding them. Seventeen years later, Johanne sits in the house alone, beginning to pen down their story as the days grow shorter and autumn turns to winter.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2024

Pages: 142

Foreign Sales: Denmark, Turbine

IGGY Edy Poppy

Edy Poppy (b. 1975) writes inquiringly and bravely about life as an artist, unconventional ways of love, and motherhood, and is a unique voice in contemporary Norwegian literature.

We’ve no time to lose, we say to each other, time and time again, like a mantra. Choosing not to keep Iggy has made the mantra even more important. Not choosing Iggy means choosing art, doesn’t it?

Marina Abramović has taken three abortions. She claims that having children makes women lag behind in the art world. That you have to be conscious of what you prioritize to spend your energy on. It won’t be on me now, I think, stroking my flat belly.

IGGY is a novel about fear of the conventional and the lust for exceedance. But also about the unsettling loneliness of someone who never wants to make commitments.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2024 Pages: 203

A DAY BY THE SEA

Per Marius Weidner-Olsen

Per Marius Weidner-Olsen (b. 1963) lives in Færder municipality. He made his debut in 2020 with the novel My Upbringing Resembled My Own (Forlaget Oktober). The book was nominated for the Brage Award in the fiction category and was well received amongst critics. In the autumn of 2022, his second novel, New Man, was published.



«Per Marius Weidner-Olsen is a master of portraying a falling man.»

Dagbladet

«A masterfully conducted novel […] Few Norwegian novels succeed in portraying what Vincent calls “the nauseating freedom” as precisely as this.»

Klassekampen

Vincent and his family are on a holiday by the Mediterranean. The kids are learning to swim, eat ice creams under a scorching sun, and make memories for life. In the evenings, the family attend gatherings with their friends and extended family. However, both Vincent and Astrid can feel their marriage beginning to unravel, and none of them can find it in themselves to make an effort to prevent it. A Day by the Sea follows a man during and after a breakup. Attentive to the hidden meanings behind words and gestures, Per Marius Weidner-Olsen has written a probing novel about waiting for a release that never happens.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2024

Pages: 192

HALF Marjam Idriss

Marjam Idriss (b. 1992) has grew up in Sola and Jåsund in Rogaland. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a Master’s degree in Medieval literature from the University of Cambridge. She made her literary debut with The Gospel According to Jannike in 2017 and has worked for several years as an antiquarian bookseller in South-East London.

«A powerful read! […] The Norwegian author Marjam Idriss (31) is worth checking out: She writes fascinatingly and skillfully about Norway’s dark colonial history in the Caribbean […] Half is a small novel telling a story that makes an impact.»

The ghosts of racism.

2023: Inge arrives on St. Croix in the Caribbean, the island that her mother comes from. She brings with her two co-workers and a brand-new position in Equinor. A massive fire has broken out on an oil platform, and the newly graduated diversity consultant has been issued to calm down the local population with a face that they can see themselves in. At the airport she is received by her mother, whom she hasn’t seen in fifteen years. The reunion brings with it old memories that Inge has tried to forget, but also stories that go way further back in time, interweaving Danish-Norwegian colonial history with the history of her family.

1759: City court judge Engebret Hesselberg longs to leave the Caribbean colony behind and return home. As the extended arm of the King, he will end up being responsible for one of the most brutal incidents of the Danish-Norwegian slave trade. Half is a novel about inheritance, ghosts of the past and the cost of racism.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2024

Pages: 288

THE LITTLE GIRLS

Monica Isakstuen

Monica Isakstuen (b. 1976) made her literary debut in 2009. Her 2014 novel Replay about pianist Joyce Hatto and the greatest fraud in classical music earned rave reviews, with VG naming it “one of the best books of the year”. She won the 2016 Norwegian Book Award Brageprisen for fiction for her novel Be Kind to the Animals.

«The Little Girls is episodic and often cinematic in form, and the language is sharp as Pacific oyster’s shell.»

Fredrikstad Blad

«A new example of Monica Isakstuen’s talent for finding ever new, original linguistic disputes on eternally relevant topics.»

Dagsavisen

People are stirring in there; the holidaymakers are waking up. Soon this summer morning will be under way, filled with longings and needs, but also with rules and handed-down admonitions. Love and scorn, side by side. Do this, not that; speak like this, not like that; and how do you behave? The rebukes threaten to consume the day. But then it opens up, in the imagination or in life, and something is finally able to happen.

The woman in The Little Girls wants to be liberated from ghosts, to connect with her daughters in a sincere way; she dreams of genuine intimacy across roles and ages. Perhaps that’s not possible, but you’re still allowed to hope.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2023

Pages: 256

Foreign Sales: Denmark, Turbine

GIRLS IN TREES

Heidi Mittun-Kjos

Heidi Mittun-Kjos (b. 1972) is born and raised in Oslo. She is the creative director of a design agency and has attended Gyldendal’s Academy of Creative Writing. In 2021, she made her debut with the novel Areas of Special Significance. Her second novel, Girls in trees, was published in 2023 to universal critical acclaim.

«[...] Girls in Trees sticks out from all the rest in this year’s Norwegian book pool, boding well for a continued authorship.»

Klassekampen Bokmagasinet

«Masterful.»

Dagbladet

She has to bury Aunt Magni on the island she comes from. That is her self-imposed mission. Her aunt's urn in her luggage, she travels back to the house where she spent the summers of her childhood. Hoping to make amends for old sins, she is confronted with the deceiving squiggles in her family lines, in a landscape where her family have been leading an unfair battle against their lots in life for generations. Searching for closure turns out to be difficult. Girls in Trees is an uproarious, devil-may-care, sensuous story of kids who grow up, kids who are hidden, and kids that never existed. About loss and loneliness, but also the moments of departure and freedom that contain the possibility of a different life.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2023

Pages: 288

Foreign Sales: Denmark, Straarup & Co.

VALRAVN Bjørn Andreas Bull-Hansen

Bjørn Andreas Bull-Hansen (b. 1972) debuted with the short story collection Seven Stories From the Western Forest in 1996. Since then, he has written several books across a variety of genres. He had his international breakthrough with his novel Jomsviking (2017), the first title in a sweeping historical series from the Viking Age.

The year is 1019. The old kings are dead, and the powerful king Cnut is holding England in an iron grip. Torstein is still cast out from the chief’s seat in Vingulmork in Viken, and in Norway, Olav Haraldsson has claimed power. Torstein’s headstrong son Ravntor is now grown up and has picked a fight with the Wends to the south. He is outlawed. A battle-worn Torstein once again has to head out to seek new alliances, but this time, it proves difficult. It is a new era. The era of the Christian King. By sword and fire, chiefs and landowners are forced to kneel before the crucifix of Christ, and Torstein’s dream of reclaiming Vingulmork seems more distant than ever.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2024

Pages: 496

THE FALL OF THE KINGS

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2023

Pages: 496

THE ARMY OF THE DANES

Publisher:

Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2021

Pages: 416

LAND OF THE DANELAW

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2022

Pages: 496

VINLAND

Publisher:

Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2019

Pages: 560

JOMSVIKING

Publisher:

Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 2019

Pages: 576

THE ICE PALACE

Tarjei Vesaas

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:

Gyldendal

Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 1963

Pages: 144

Tarjei Vesaas was a modernist who maintained a degree of technical experimentation throughout his work. He is regarded as one of Scandinavia’s foremost twentieth-century writers and was the first Norwegian to win the Nordic Council's 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.

THE BIRDS

Tarjei Vesaas

The Birds (1957) might be Tarjei Vesaas’ masterpiece. No other character has 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’s 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 Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 1957

Pages: 208

He started writing poems and articles for newspapers at the age of 23. The year after, he won a price for one of his poems, which led him to send some of his work to a publisher. For his short story collection The Winds (Vindane , 1950), he won the Venice Prize in 1953, which resulted in his international break-through. His novels have been translated into 28 languages.

THE ALBERTA TRILOGY

Cora Sandel

Alberta and Jacob (1926), the first volume of the trilogy, introduces Alberta Selmer, one of the 20th century’s great antiheroines: 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.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 1926

Pages: 320

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.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 1931

Pages: 304

«Ahead of her time . . . like Virginia Woolf though much tougher. A classic. »

Times Literary Supplement

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.

Publisher: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Publication year: 1939

Pages: 368

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.