Restricted to life within the same four walls at the moment? If lockdown is continuing where you are, we would highly recommend reading the award-winning A House in Norway by Vigdis Hjorth. Translated by Charlotte Barslund and selected for an English PEN Award as part of the PEN Translates! programme, this novel is a penetrating study of power relations in contemporary Nordic society.
The relationship between a property owner and their tenant is an uneasy one: ‘the power balance was unequal, that is if you could talk about power in such cases, and you probably could’. Petty squabbles over whose responsibility it is to clear a shared driveway of snow, wasteful electricity use, late-night shower routines and prejudices based on superficial appearances – the tenant’s bed-linen is preemptively dismissed by her landlady as ‘undoubtedly synthetic’ – accrue and accumulate, heading towards inevitable combustion.
If you would like to read for yourself how this particular tapestry of tangled lives turns out, copies can be ordered here or you can read the opening pages here. It will also be perfect pre-reading for the 20th Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin, scheduled for September this year (pandemic permitting), where Vigdis Hjorth has been invited to appear as a guest.
