Date of release: 2021-10-06
Pages: 740
Sold to: Denmark: Gutkind, Norway: Cappelen Damm
Disaster. It all begins with absolute disaster. A hot, lazy beach day – white light washing white sands – transformed into something malignant, untethering life from what has been, propelling forward into the unknown.
The people? Three young families, their backgrounds vastly different. Some of them pretty and poised. Others fiercely ambitious and unable to hide their fangs. A woman shouting mad and ready to wreak havoc. Another, quietly ready to do... whatever needs to be done. And that’s not even mentioning the money. The hush-hush of having and not having.
Still, they are bound together, a bond that grows into love, a love rooted in that first disaster.
The place? A coastal fishing village, postcard pretty and scented with the salt of sea, the tender warmth of lavender. Or at least that’s what you’d want to see; through the lens of nostalgia, what they’d want you to see. Perhaps, all some allow themselves to see.
The time frame? 40 years of modern European history. The push and pull of macro-economics, pushing and pulling at the fabric of that village, those people, those fragile, fragile promises, and the iron-clad connections underpinning tradition. Safety. The advent of a new time, a new way of looking at those age-old concepts: home, truth, God, woman.
The focal point? A life evolving, a girl growing into voice, and power. A longing to belong, overshadowed by the need to be. To just be.
Even if just being means a final disaster. A burning of it all. A burning of it all to the ground.
Agnes Lidbeck follows up on her previous successes with an epic literary novel. Her exquisite prose, along with her razor-sharp eye for interpersonal relationships and the conditions that shape them, make Nikky's Book a true autumn must-read.
SHORTLISTED FOR SVENSKA DAGBLADET'S LITERATURE PRIZE 2021
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