Hanne Orstavik

A breathless, propulsive look into the caustic sides of love, from the beloved Norwegian winner of the PEN translation prize and National Book Award Finalist "What is so impressive is rstavik's ability to capture -- with precision, candor and, indeed, tenacity -- her shifting sense of self, as the foundations on which it rests crumble with every passing moment." -- Toby Lichtig, The Wall Street Journal Fear is a second skin for the unnamed narrator of Hanne rstavik's Stay With Me. A successful writer at 53, her father may be a frail twig, but the fear from her past, and of her father's rage, still envelopes her. In urgent prose, the contours of her life emerge: a 12-year marriage, the death of her lover L, her troubled relationship with M -- 15 years her junior and vexed with an all-too-familiar rage. We waver between our narrator's life and the life of Judith, the protagonist of her nascent novel. Judith is a Norwegian costume designer who falls in love with Myrto, a conductor in an orchestra, who she moves with to Minneapolis. Pulled between the cities of Minneapolis, Oslo, and Milan, and the voice of Judith and her own, our narrator writes with an unparalleled emotional intimacy. What results is the recursive voice of someone gasping for breath: Who are Pappa, and M, without their rage? Who am I, without my fear? Who am I reaching for, when I reach for Judith? With Martin Aikten's careful translation, Hanne rstavik unravels the binds that fasten us to those we love -- why we return despite immeasurable pain, and why we finally, justly, leave.

A novel of incredible beauty and truth, filled with tenderness and grief, love and loneliness, Ti Amo explores the emotional world of a woman losing her new husband to cancer. Clear-eyed and unafraid of taboo, it asks how and for whom we can live, when the one we love best is about to die.

A penetrating study of passion, suffering, and loss from one of Norway's most tenacious writers: National Book Award Finalist and PEN translation prize winner Hanne rstavik Celebrated throughout the world for her candor and sensitivity to the rhythms of language, Hanne rstavik is a leading light on the international stage. rstavik writes with "a compulsion for truth that feels like her] very life force itself." Laced with a tingling frankness, rstavik's prose adheres so closely to the inner workings of its narrator's mind as to nearly undo itself. In Martin Aitken's translation, rstavik's piercing story sings. Ti Amo brings a new, deeply personal approach, as the novel is based in rstavik's own experience of losing her Italian husband to cancer. By facing loss directly, she includes readers in an experience that many face in isolation. Written and set in the early months of 2020, its themes of loss and suffering are particularly well suited for a time of international mourning. What can be found within a gaze? What lies inside a painting or behind a handful of repeated words? These are the questions that haunt our unnamed narrator as she tends to her husband, stricken with cancer, in the final months of his life. She examines the elements of their life together: their Vietnamese rose-colored folding table where they eat their meals, each of the New Year's Eves they've shared, their friendships, and their most intimate exchanges. With everything in flux, she searches for the facets that will remain.

A major work of contemporary fiction from a "leading light of international literature" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Hanne rstavik, whose last novel, Love, won the PEN Translation Prize. A thought-provoking, existential novel - as Liv searches for meaning and identity in her own life, she must find the words to connect, comfort and lead others. Liv, an intense and reticent theologian, moves to a bitterly cold fishing village to take up a post as the church's new pastor following the death of her friend, Kristiane. In the upper rooms of a large house overlooking the fjord, Liv plans her sermons and studies the violent interplay of Norway's Christian colonial past. She trails downstairs into the apartment below for dinners and breakfasts with a widow and her two children. As Liv becomes acquainted with the villagers and their own private tragedies, memories bloom in passages that urgently question the unpredictable bedrock of language, and the peculiar channels of imagined experience as it might have been, if only there had been a different set of words, or an outstretched hand. The past mingles darkly with the present, cascading in chilling images: a dog lying dead in the snowy plains, Kristiane's teeth flashing as she laughs, a procession of singing, knife-carrying protesters curving along a river's edge. Martin Aitken's translation of this extraordinary novel rings with the brilliance and rigor of a master.

As clear and relentless as the cold air, Love unfolds over one winter's evening. Single mother Vibeke and her son Jon have just moved to a small, remote town in the north of Norway. Tomorrow Jon will be nine. As Vibeke gets changed after work, Jon wonders what surprises his mother has prepared for him. He leaves the house certain she will make him a cake. But preoccupied with concerns of her own, she too ventures out. Inextricably linked yet desperately at odds, mother and son make their lonely ways through the unforgiving night. Beautifully translated into English by Martin Aitken, this edition is the twenty-eighth international publication of Love. Hanne Orstavik's astonishing grasp of human fragility and her economy of form power this acknowledged masterpiece of Norwegian literature.

Johanne is a young woman in her twenties who lives with her mother. When she falls in love with Ivar, she finally feels ready to leave home. The couple plan a trip to America. But the morning of her departure, Johanne wakes up to find the door locked.