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  • Is Mother Dead

Verso Book

Is Mother Dead

by Vigdis Hjorth.

Translated from Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund.

  • £11.99
  • Available
  • Paperback published on 05/09/2023
  • Page count: 353 pages
  • ISBN: 9781804291849
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Quick take

A cat and mouse game of surveillance and psychological torment develops between a middleaged artist and her aging mother.

Synopsis

A 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, Will and Testament '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.

About the author

Vigdis Hjorth is the author of over a dozen prize-winning and best-selling novels. Will and Testament sold 170,000 copies in Norway and has received several awards, including the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize, as well as being nominated for the National Book Award and Nordic Council Literature Prize. Long Live the Post Horn! won the Believer Book Award for fiction in 2020, and Is Mother Dead was listed for the International Booker Prize in 2023.

More books published by Verso Book

Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world, publishing one hundred books a year.

View all books by Verso Book

More books written or translated by Charlotte Barslund
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