Is Mother Dead was released into the English market this autumn to great acclaim. The New York Time Book Review called it a «harrowing and propulsive novel about the strained tether between daughters and mothers … lucidly translated by Charlotte Barslund.» We are now thrilled to share the news that the novel has been long listed for the International Booker Prize 2023.

Vigdis Hjorth is one of the greatest of the contemporary writers in the Nordic countries today. She writes existential novels about the reasons and choices of people, and she has a sharp eye to both timely and tabooed topics of our current times. In Is Mother Dead, she further explores the mother-daughter-relationship and ventures even further into the issue that she has also written about in several other novels. 

Upon its publication in Norway in 2020 Is Mother Dead was also nominated to the Nordic Council Literature Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in all the Nordic countries. The English translation is by Charlotte Barslund and published by Verso books in both the UK and the US.

Our warmest congratulations to Vigdis Hjorth, Charlotte Barslund, Verso Books and all other nominees.

See the full longlist here.