Rights catalogue

Our way out

Kari Løvendahl Mogstad / Selma Løvendahl Mogstad Leraand

Eating disorders affect both genders and all ages. It’s an increasing health and community issue, especially among young people. Doctor Kari Løvendahl Mogstad explores different eating disorders, which signs you should look out for, information about treatment, societal consequences, and new research. She also shares her personal story about when her daughter Selma became ill with anorexia, and Selma offers her own texts which give an insight into the young person’s day-to-day and shows how the disease feels from the inside. The combination of the mother and daughter experience makes this story especially strong and believable. They offer hope to others going through the same, whether as the one suffering the disorder or the relative.

Walking Home

Mathias Nyhagen Asplund

In a merciless tale told in meticulous language reminiscent of both Faulkner and Fosse, Asplund writes the story of a young man called Halvor who is trying to find his way home. Halvor has been fighting the war at sea and now plans to return home to his pregnant wife. He walks across mountains and through valleys, he meets a woman and a man carrying their son’s coffin, he meets two friends who have left the city to “be free”, and he is coaxed into the home of a young woman and her mother, who needs a man to help her. They tell him that there is a bear in the area, and that the bear is vicious. The road home is long, and on it Halvor encounters tragedy, temptation, kindness and mortal peril. Walking Home is Asplund’s third book.

Becoming a Mother

Oda Weider-Krog

“When a child is born, a mother is also born. Into a brand new day-to-day, a whole new life. She’s thrown into an existence one cannot prepare for in advance. It’s as if a line is put down, a line separating the before and the now.” Becoming a Mother is a small book about the biggest experience in the world. Oda Weider-Krog writes about the all-consuming time during the child’s first year, the demanding and the emotional, and the intoxicating feeling of getting to know your child. How many hours does a child need to be breastfed? Are there other mothers out there longing for some alone time and sleep? With warmth and humour she writes about the first months as a new mother, about breastfeeding and blocked milk ducts, changing diapers and endless nights awake, about loneliness, longing and doubt, falling in love and bottomless love – all these precious moments and the chaotic feelings that arrive together when you become a mother.

Putting the Pieces Together

Martin Revheim

Martin’s story is a harrowing tale of failure and betrayal. About growing up with a violent and unpredictable father. About serious neglect and violence that was never discovered. Reality literature is overflowing with stories of sons’ difficult relationships with domineering fathers. This story is also about a father failing in his duty of care, but most of all about a son’s struggle to get out of his father’s shadow. That said, no parent is a monster, and it is precisely the relationship between good and bad memories that leaves children unsure as to whether they want to repair a relationship—an uncertainty that many fight until it is too late. Eia-Revheim depicts the relationship with ambivalence, with love and longing as well as disappointment and bitterness. If you experience a little love, you want more, he writes. Who wouldn’t relate to that?

Åsgårdstrand

Stig Aasvik

Åsgårdstrand is a small town by the Oslofjord, but also a condition, an open wound in the life of the protagonist. In the late winter of 1989, his mother dies suddenly. The family falls apart. The protagonist is standing at the threshold of adulthood and feels abandoned and unprepared. Of all the thoughts going through his head, there is one that persists: disappear, from his family and from Åsgårdstrand, from everything. The protagonist is a middle-aged man when he writes about the upheaval and loss he experienced as a teenager. We meet him going about his everyday life as a family man and author. The memories are fragmented, fragile and uncertain. Åsgårdstrand is the fifth novel in a series that started with The Lofoten Wall (2017). The books can be read as standalone stories but have a consistent form, an inner coherence and a common thread.

Eight

Gine Cornelia Pedersen

Eight is a collection of stories about people teetering over the edge – each in their own way. The characters are confronted with their urges, their feelings of jealousy and their intense longing to be loved. By creating images of themselves in others, the people in these stories are able to avoid themselves. Ingunn Bjørkli changes her name on social media to Aurora Irene Høst, in the hopes of erasing Ingunn for good. Meanwhile, Reiden Østby makes a new friend in her yoga class, but this friend starts giving her gifts and trying to get closer to Reidun than what she is comfortable with. Gine Cornelia Pedersen has made her mark as an author with a distinct voice. Eight is a collection of stories about people here and now, about their human impulses and desires: their longing for love, their jealousy, selfishness, intense irritation and grovelling admiration.

The Eye

Sara Nøland

The eyes are the body’s unique camera, livestreaming every waking hour to the brain. How in the world do these moist organs, decorated with irises of varying colours, manage this incredible task—that is, seeing? Sight is a bit like love: you don’t know you love it until it’s gone. In reading this book, you will come to realise that the function of the eye plays a key role in our lives. Many people live good lives without sight, but what can be prevented should be prevented. In this book, medical student and researcher Sara T. Nøland describes how vision works in a simple, entertaining and fascinating way, injecting fun facts, the latest and most cutting-edge research, and specific tips and tricks.

2070

Bjørn H. Samset

The route to avoiding climate change runs from now to 2070. In 50 years’ time, the green revolution must have happened. In 50 years’ time, we must be fossil-free. That’s how simple it is. And yet, so incredibly difficult. In this book, Samset shows us how we ended up where we are today, explains the models and climate systems we need to grasp, and gives us hope for the road ahead. If we read the expert literature about climate change we’ll find no shortage of material for fire-and-brimstone sermons. But dystopias won’t inspire us to face the future. So this is a climate book that doesn’t deal with worst-case scenarios (although they are mentioned), but focuses instead on offering hope. We’re taken on a journey to 2070, following one of the routes we can choose to take to avoid the worst consequences of climate change while also building a sustainable world.

ADHD

Kristin Leer

ADHD is often defined as a psychiatric disorder, but physician and author Kristin Leer, who has ADHD herself, as well as children with ADHD, cannot see ADHD as the diagnosis of a disease. For the author, it was a relief to find out that she had ADHD. Had she realised earlier that the cause of so many challenges and sorrows – at school, in her professional career, in personal relationships – could be summed up in four simple initials, she would have been spared much frustration and anxiety. ADHD is something you can live with. What’s more, it can sometimes have some surprisingly positive sides. However, ADHD may also make life feel like an uphill struggle, and the range of functional impairments can be extensive. The book offers a new perspective on how to understand ADHD, reviews diagnostic criteria and treatments, and offers excellent everyday coping strategies. A better life is possible when ADHD is diagnosed than when it isn’t.

The Christmas Calendar

Siri Østli

During breakfast on a totally ordinary Tuesday, Fie's husband declared that he wants a divorce. He is a dentist, and for years Fie has been his faithful assistant - without pay. Fie is banished from her home, to an impractical and uncharming attic apartment on the other side of the city. Dazed and in despair after losing everything, Fie tries to soften the blow with sedatives. Her adult son, embarrassed about his mother's breakdown, refuses her calls. As Christmas approaches, Fie’s sister Sara demanding that she gets a grip. To help her along the way, Sara makes a Christmas Calendar with tasks for Fie to do. Like getting a job, decorating her apartment, getting a pet. Can the calendar get Fie’s life back on track, and into the Christmas spirits? The Christmas Calendar is a charming and touching Christmas book from the Norwegian queen of feelgood!

Everything´s OK

Ebba Eiring