A event on Thursday 5th September. The event starts at 18:30.
We are honoured and delighted to welcome one of the most important Norwegian novelists of all time, the omni-garlanded author of Will and Testament, Long Live The Post Horn!, and the International Booker Prize-shortlisted Is Mother Dead?, Vigdis Hjorth the shop – along with her longtime translator and collaborator Charlotte Barslund!
Vigdis and Charlotte will be in conversation about Hjorth’s classic novel If Only which, despite being written in 2001 and instantly becoming a landmark of Norwegian literary fiction, has only just been translated into English (by Charlotte, obviously).
Tickets include a glass of wine. Pre-order your copy of If Only (rrp £12.99) for a special discounted price with your ticket, then collect on the night!
Time & Place:
Thursday 5th September 2024, 6:30pm, £8-£15
Storysmith, 236 North Street, Bristol, BS3 1JD
About Vigdis Hjorth
Vigdis Hjorth is the author of over a dozen prize-winning and best-selling novels. Will and Testament sold 170,000 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 National Book Award and Nordic Council Literature Prize. Long Live the Post Horn! won the Believer Book Award for fiction in 2020, and Is Mother Dead was listed for the International Booker Prize in 2023.
Photo credit: Sara Angelica Spilling
About Charlotte Barslund
Charlotte Barslund translates books and plays from Norway, Denmark and Greenland. Her translation of Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth was nominated for the 2023 International Booker Prize. Novels translated include Will and Testament and Long Live the Post Horn! both by Vigdis Hjorth, the Arctic crime novels The Girl Without Skin and Cold Fear by Mads Peder Nordbo, Resin by Ane Riel, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Petrona Award, and A House in Norway by Vigdis Hjorth, which was longlisted for the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award. Her translation of Wildwitch by Lene Kaaberbøl was the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY UK) Honour Book of 2018.
About If Only
A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter.
January and minus 14°C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the mailbox on its post, but higher up the sky is blue, clear, the sun has come back. She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. She has an impending sense of doom or possibly her own death.
Can passion be mistaken for love? When Ida meets Arnold, also married, at a conference, she impulsively invites him to share her bed. She returns home, already half-obsessed, and the dissolution of her marriage and break-up of her family pass almost without her noticing. Arnold has a more relaxed attitude toward the affair.
But neither his coolness nor the alarming talk she hears about him can dampen her desire. When she finally has Arnold for herself, all the surface niceties and indulgences they enjoy – travel, sex, beers for breakfast and cocktails for dinner – can’t sustain the sweetness of the fantasy. Their mounting jealousies and insecurities metastasize, resulting in violence and addiction.
In urgent prose, with layers of candid and vivid detail, Hjorth shows just how devastating love can be when it binds the wrong people.
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
Vigdis and Charlotte will be in conversation about Hjorth’s classic novel If Only which, despite being written in 2001 and instantly becoming a landmark of Norwegian literary fiction, has only just been translated into English (by Charlotte, obviously).
Tickets include a glass of wine. Pre-order your copy of If Only (rrp £12.99) for a special discounted price with your ticket, then collect on the night!
Time & Place:
Thursday 5th September 2024, 6:30pm, £8-£15
Storysmith, 236 North Street, Bristol, BS3 1JD
About Vigdis Hjorth
Vigdis Hjorth is the author of over a dozen prize-winning and best-selling novels. Will and Testament sold 170,000 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 National Book Award and Nordic Council Literature Prize. Long Live the Post Horn! won the Believer Book Award for fiction in 2020, and Is Mother Dead was listed for the International Booker Prize in 2023.
Photo credit: Sara Angelica Spilling
About Charlotte Barslund
Charlotte Barslund translates books and plays from Norway, Denmark and Greenland. Her translation of Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth was nominated for the 2023 International Booker Prize. Novels translated include Will and Testament and Long Live the Post Horn! both by Vigdis Hjorth, the Arctic crime novels The Girl Without Skin and Cold Fear by Mads Peder Nordbo, Resin by Ane Riel, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Petrona Award, and A House in Norway by Vigdis Hjorth, which was longlisted for the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award. Her translation of Wildwitch by Lene Kaaberbøl was the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY UK) Honour Book of 2018.
About If Only
A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter.
January and minus 14°C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the mailbox on its post, but higher up the sky is blue, clear, the sun has come back. She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. She has an impending sense of doom or possibly her own death.
Can passion be mistaken for love? When Ida meets Arnold, also married, at a conference, she impulsively invites him to share her bed. She returns home, already half-obsessed, and the dissolution of her marriage and break-up of her family pass almost without her noticing. Arnold has a more relaxed attitude toward the affair.
But neither his coolness nor the alarming talk she hears about him can dampen her desire. When she finally has Arnold for herself, all the surface niceties and indulgences they enjoy – travel, sex, beers for breakfast and cocktails for dinner – can’t sustain the sweetness of the fantasy. Their mounting jealousies and insecurities metastasize, resulting in violence and addiction.
In urgent prose, with layers of candid and vivid detail, Hjorth shows just how devastating love can be when it binds the wrong people.
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
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