Unquiet

Linn Ullmann has written something of beauty and solace and truth. I don't know how she managed to sail across such dangerous waters

Linn Ullmann has written something of beauty and solace and truth. I don't know how she managed to sail across such dangerous waters

This magnificent, elegant work is pure tour de force... one of the best things I've read in a long, long time

[An] exquisite and warm novel ... Among Norway's contemporary writers, Ullmann might be the finest sentence by sentence

Unquiet is a wonderfully absorbing and moving family story told with a directness, naturalness, and grace that can only result from Linn Ullmann's close attention to the eloquent details of day-to-day life, her honest embrace of herself and the people close to her, and a keen sensitivity to language and the high demands of good writing

I've long admired Linn Ullmann's fiction, and Unquiet is her masterpiece. Based on her upbringing as the child of two great artists, it is the portrait of complex loves; of a youth divided and inspired by diametrically opposed creative influences; and of the ravages of age. Calm yet fierce, exquisitely rendered, this novel imprints itself indelibly?as if you, too, had been there

Ullmann navigates the dangerous and fissile territory... with great power. I am in awe

Effortlessly lucid, full of grace and restraint

A powerful and unsettling hybrid of memoir, fiction and meditation ... The work of a lifetime

Linn Ullmann is one of the most prominent voices in contemporary Scandinavian literature. Her novels have been translated into over twenty languages, and she has received numerous awards, including the Amalie Skram Prize, the Dobloug Prize and the Aschehoug Prize – all for her collected body of work. Girl, 1983 was nominated for the prestigious Nordic Council Literature Prize, as was its predecessor Unquiet, published by Hamish Hamilton in 2020. The two novels form part of an ongoing trilogy, meditating on memory, rage and desire.