UpLit / Literature and Fiction · Paperback

The Witch Cave

Norwegian title: Maur: Heksehula

Vegard Vinsjansen

Welcome to Balnesvik, a place in Western Norway. It's a small village, a small town so strangely familiar that it could have been where you grew up. But there's more to Balnesvik than meets the eye.

Sondre is 16 years old and about to finish middle school. His big dream is to work in film, and he hopes to get into a sought-after media study programme in the city. He can't wait to get away from «the fucked-up farming country», but before he gets that far, a mysterious illness begins to spread in the village. It starts with the family cat Pelle, who has a nasty wound that smells bad and is behaving strange. And then there's Sondre's younger brother, Robert, who gets a flock of ants to commit collective suicide in a puddle. And who is the mysterious Julia, who appears everywhere?

Together with his friends Lasse and Maryam, Sondre must navigate through various threats to unravel a conspiracy that stretches back through the village's history and is linked to the legendary closed mine – often called The Witch Cave – and where Sondre's family find themselves at the center of something that could affect the entire world.