Literature and Fiction · Hardback

Right to Privacy

Norwegian title: Privatlivets fred

Selma Lønning Aarø

An author wakes up in hospital. Something dramatic has happened – she just can’t quite remember what. What she can recall, however, is what happened before.

When the author moves to Fredrikstad from Oslo with her family, she finds new friends, a new life and what she hopes will be the starting-point for a new novel. Her new girlfriend X has given her permission to write whatever she wants about what they describe as a major issue that has marked X’s life. It looks set to be the author’s best novel ever, but X gradually becomes increasingly unstable and intimidating, and the author realises that her entire writing project is in jeopardy. The same goes for her artistic freedom, her finances, her relationship to her publisher and colleagues – not to mention the relationships in her own family. What can an author allow herself, and who really owns a story?

Selma Lønning Aarø’s new novel is funny, sometimes frightening and unusually topical. A continuation of a strong feminist tradition, it also comments on the debate about reality literature.

Funny and sharp-witted

“Selma Lønning Aarø explores the dilemmas of autofiction – and with a brand new twist. … What is the ethical responsibility of an author? [Her] new novel, Right to Privacy, goes straight to the heart of this problem in a way that is both funny and thought-provoking. (…) You come home with her, and would rather not leave. (…) she is both very funny and knowledgeable.”

AFTENPOSTEN

“Elegantly done (…) Selma Lønning Aarø writes with levity and humour, with lots of funny and sharp turns of phrase, observations, conclusions. (…) And there is it again, the question of what is real – and “real”. Selma Lønning Aarø doesn’t offer a solution. That’s the point. But a fun and quite original twist on the problem raised, is something that is definitely offered in Right to Privacy.”

DAGSAVISEN

Satirical and astute

“With Right to Privacy, Selma Lønning Aarø invites us to think critically about the use of real-life models in literature, and she offers several interesting reflections about the nature of truth and who gets to tell their story.”

DAGENS NÆRINGSLIV

“It’s a smooth-flowing, well-oiled text, written without ornaments, tight-reined … Lønning Aarø writes hilariously about being perceived as getting on in years, about supposedly belonging to a time gone by.”

FREDRIKSTAD BLAD