{"title":"Books by Vigdis Hjorth","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781788733137","title":"Long Live the Post Horn!","description":"\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2020 Believer Book Award for Fiction\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A brilliant study of the mundane, full of unexpected detours and driving prose. Hjorth's novel ingeniously orbits the intimate stories that are possible only when a character has put words on paper and sent them through the post.\" – \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, “The Best Post Office Novel You Will Read Before the Election”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Vigdis Hjorth is one of my favorite contemporary writers.\" – Sheila Heti, author of \u003ci\u003eMotherhood\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eHow Should a Person Be?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the author of the 2019 National Book Award Longlisted\u003ci\u003e Will and Testament\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEllinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself; she's not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognise the woman in its pages, seemingly as far away from the world around her as she's ever been. But when her coworker vanishes overnight, an unusual new task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange and transformative six months.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is an existential scream of a novel about loneliness (and the postal service!), written in Vigdis Hjorth's trademark spare, rhythmic and cutting style.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305578344821,"sku":"9781788733137","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781788733137_da4b4b2e-1c18-47ce-b821-f5ff506bbe72.jpg?v=1786026977"},{"product_id":"9781788733106","title":"Will and Testament","description":"\u003cb\u003eLonglisted for the National Book Award\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eFour siblings, two summer houses, one terrible secret\u003c\/i\u003e—the “prickly, persuasive” bestseller from one of Norway’s most celebrated novelists, perfect for readers of Rachel Cusk and Karl Ove Knausgaard (\u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“ . . . Hypnotic. Hjorth works finely parsed and brilliant variations on her unrelenting theme of familial mistrust and misunderstanding.” —\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen a dispute over her parents’ will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled twenty years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer houses to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. To outsiders, it is a quarrel about property and favoritism. But Bergljot, who has borne a horrible secret since childhood, understands the gesture as something very different—a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eWill and Testament\u003c\/i\u003e is a lyrical meditation on trauma and memory, as well as a furious account of a woman’s struggle to survive and be believed. Vigdis Hjorth’s novel became a controversial literary sensation in Norway and has been translated into twenty languages.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56306890867061,"sku":"9781788733106","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781788733106_7664c55e-eee5-4213-b069-933df901eadb.jpg?v=1786026977"},{"product_id":"9781804291849","title":"Is Mother Dead","description":"\u003cb\u003eLonglisted for the International Booker Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA cat and mouse game of surveillance and psychological torment develops between a middleaged artist and her aging mother, as Vigdis Hjorth returns to the themes of her controverdsial modern classic, \u003ci\u003eWill and Testament\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'To mother is to murder, or close enough', thinks Johanna, as she looks at the spelling of the two words in Norwegian. She's recently widowed and back in Oslo after a long absence as she prepares for a retrospective of her art.The subject of her work is motherhood and some of her more controversial paintings have brought aboiut a dramatic rift between parent and child. This new proximity, after decades of acrimonius absence, set both women on edge, and before too long Johanna finds her mother stalking her thoughts, and Johanna starts stalking her mother's house.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307019841909,"sku":"9781804291849","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781804291849_e3724cca-76c6-4676-b145-ee72fefa6847.jpg?v=1786026715"},{"product_id":"9781784877675","title":"A Scandinavian Christmas","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRanging from Hans Christian Anderson to Karl Ove Knausgaard, have yourself a nordic noel with the very best Scandinavian Christmas tales\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHave yourself a truly Scandinavian Christmas... Of visions and prophesies seen in dark, dark woods. Of toys and trees come to life. Of trolls raising chaos, and of families torn apart -- only to be brought back together by festive cheer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this collection, classic tales from Hans Christian Andersen and Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlof blend with modern day stories from Karl Ove Knausgaard and Vigdis Hjorth. Each touch on the warm and wild spirit of Christmas, where the cosiness and contentment of the season can often give way to the unexpected, magical and sometimes mystical.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA smorgasbord of strange literary gifts, let A Scandinavian Christmas transport you to a winter wonderland in which fantasy, the fantastic and the festive combine for your reading delight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'These evocative, atmospheric tales...capture the spirit of Christmas' \u003ci\u003eSunday Express\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56312842092917,"sku":"9781784877675","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784877675_34b11e16-2d3c-4764-b0cc-30ed4cda34dd.jpg?v=1786025657"},{"product_id":"9781804298947","title":"Repetition","description":"\u003cb\u003eOne of the foremost writers of her generation explores the strength and pain of being young\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs winter approaches in Norway and the daylight dwindles, a chance encounter prompts a novelist to reexamine her past. The seismic events following her sixteenth birthday return with haunting vividness, exposing a story both utterly familiar and desperately strange.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was the year she first got drunk, the year she first had sex with a boy. She was watched like a hawk by an anxious mother and a silent, distant father. It was a year of typical teenage fixation and typical teenage frivolity, and of all the usual parental fretting. Until something else took hold, and her family made an unspoken decision and a terrible sacrifice. Only now, decades later, can these events come close to being comprehended.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eRepetition\u003c\/i\u003e, award-winning novelist Vigdis Hjorth explores through fiction the parts of childhood that chime through the decades.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369212948853,"sku":"9781804298947","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781804298947_de59d537-df49-418b-905f-8612818f6deb.jpg?v=1786026841"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-vigdis-hjorth.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}