Will & Testament

Hjorth, Vigdis

£10.99

Four siblings. Two summer houses. One terrrible secret. A woman walks her dog in the snow, drinks wine by the fire and considers the inheritance dispute that’s dragging her back towards the family she fled years ago, and the degree to which the horrors and conflicts of the past should be allowed shake her present.

Available on backorder

Publish Date: 10/09/2019
ISBN: 9781788733106 Category:

Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

“The cumulative effect is hypnotic. Hjorth works finely parsed and brilliant variations on her unrelenting theme of familial mistrust and misunderstanding.” –New York Times

“A prickly, persuasive novel. Like Knausgaard, Hjorth is writing against repression, against the taboo on telling things as they really are. But he urges us to look at dead bodies; she forces us to regard bleeding souls.” –New Yorker

Four siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret. When 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 favouritism. 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.

Will and Testament 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.

Additional information

Weight 283 g
Dimensions 198 × 129 × 22 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

304

Language

English

Edition

|Paperback original

Dewey

839.8238 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K