Gøril Emilie Hellen
Ten year old Svanhild thinks she lives in the safest place in the world: the porter residence by the city hospital, where her father Johan has a post as a porter. She idolizes her brother Einar, almost ten years her elder, even though the adults say that his imagination has run wild. Svanhild is going to Girl Scout camp, but she misses her brother, who's been admitted to the psychiatric hospital. The day Svanhild comes home from camp, tragedy strikes. The Porter Residence is a poignant and poetic novel about a family that falls victim to the post-war healthcare system and treatment methods of that time.
Roy Jacobsen
Roy Jacobsen's celebrated essay on his many childhood visits to the Vigeland Park, the world's largest sculpture park by a single artist, and his mother's mysterious dentist appointments, is now a book of its own, accompanied by photographs. This personal essay is a must-read for all Jacobsen fans. 'Not only does the text impart knowledge about Vigeland's artwork, but it also approaches something I understand to be the driving powers in Roy Jacobsen's authorship, rife with countless strong, complex female figures as it is. Making the invisible struggle visible isn't just a goal for his newest series fra Barrøy on the Helgeland coast (…) The essay is appalling, upsetting – and encouraging.'KLASSEKAMPEN'I wouldn't have believed that one of the year's best reading experiences would show up in an anthology about Oslo's art collection.'AFTENPOSTEN