Seven Days in August

Brit Bildøen

Translated by Becky L. Crook

Forthcoming

 

5 x 8 inches, 224 pp. October 2016

ISBN : 9780857423825

Rs  595.00 (HB)
$24.50 (HB)
£17.00 (HB)

Buy (HB)

A few years after the deadly 2011 terror attack in Norway’s Utøya Island, Otto and Sofie are attempting to put the pieces of their life back together without their beloved daughter, who was murdered alongside many other youths on one of the worst day’s in Norway’s history. Seven Days in August is the story of Otto and Sofie’s grief, painstakingly narrated over just one week—a window into their attempts to navigate a life together, face to face with their own helplessness and mortality.

 

The week begins with a tick bite on Sofie’s hand, which continues to swell dangerously as the days pass. As her pain intensifies, so too does the marital strife present in a household stricken by grief. Told in award-winning Norwegian writer Brit Bildøen’s signature lyrical prose, the story slowly unfurls the horrors of a national tragedy, while peeling back the layers of sorrow that infect relationships over time.

Brit Bildøen is viewed as foremost among contemporary Norwegian authors. Her 1998 novel Tvillingfeber (Twin Fever) won both the Oslo Prize and the Nynorsk Litteratur prizes, and was nominated for the prestigious Brage Prize in Norway. Her next novel, Landfastlykke (Mainland Happiness, 2001) won the Melsom Prize and the Sigmund Skard Scholarship. Bildøen was trained as a librarian, but she has translated literature, worked as a newspaper editor as well as a publishing consultant for Samlaget, and was a member of the Literary Council of the Norwegian Author’s Union.

 

Becky L. Crook is a freelance literary translator of Norwegian and German novels into English. In 2010, she founded SAND literary journal in Berlin and worked as the editor-in-chief until 2012. Also a writer, her essays and short stories have appeared in multiple magazines and two anthologies, and she is now at work finishing her first novel. She currently lives on Bainbridge Island near Seattle with her husband and daughter.

Seagull World Literature
Fiction