Awards

• Short-listed for National Book Awards (Translation) 2019

Overview

Four siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret. To what degree should the horrors of the past be allowed to shake the present? Stalked by the darkest of shadows from her childhood, a woman struggles against the tide dragging her back to the family she fled years ago. This emotionally searing novel is at once a wrenching look at a family fractured and a meditation on the nature of trauma and memory.

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9781788733106

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Reviews

This was a novel that people could enjoy either as high literature or as a work of down-and-dirty revenge. The tabloids loved it as much as the broadsheets, and it became the bestselling novel of the year. - Guardian Hjorth parcels out the secrets with a precision worthy of Ibsen, so that the level of suspense is maintained up to the very last of the 343 pages. - Aftenposten Vigdis Hjorth's new novel is furious and wise, trembling and stringent. Wills and Testaments examines who owns the past. This is the novel in weaponised form. - NRK Its strong emotional truths take hold of you immediately - even before the family secret's consequences are made apparent: I dogeared page after page to mark off insights, movements, formulations. - Dagens Nyheter The strength of the novel lies in Bergljot's convincing and continuing vulnerability, in her mixed feelings and her flaws ... A clear-eyed and convincing story of a family's doomed attempt to reconcile and the limits of forgiveness. - Kirkus Vigdis Hjorth is one of my favorite contemporary writers. - Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? In a ruthless yet patiently delivered work, Hjorth does something that few writers achieve: Will and Testament is both economical and overwhelming. - Elsa Court, Financial Times

This was a novel that people could enjoy either as high literature or as a work of down-and-dirty revenge. The tabloids loved it as much as the broadsheets, and it became the bestselling novel of the year. - Guardian Hjorth parcels out the secrets with a precision worthy of Ibsen, so that the level of suspense is maintained up to the very last of the 343 pages. - Aftenposten Vigdis Hjorth's new novel is furious and wise, trembling and stringent. Wills and Testaments examines who owns the past. This is the novel in weaponised form. - NRK Its strong emotional truths take hold of you immediately - even before the family secret's consequences are made apparent: I dogeared page after page to mark off insights, movements, formulations. - Dagens Nyheter The strength of the novel lies in Bergljot's convincing and continuing vulnerability, in her mixed feelings and her flaws ... A clear-eyed and convincing story of a family's doomed attempt to reconcile and the limits of forgiveness. - Kirkus Vigdis Hjorth is one of my favorite contemporary writers - Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? In a ruthless yet patiently delivered work, Hjorth does something that few writers achieve: Will and Testament is both economical and overwhelming. - Elsa Court, Financial Times Will and Testament is a compulsively readable novel, one that turns questions of shame into weapons against silence. - Paris Review Hjorth's thoughtful, drily funny, and often devastating novel will leave a deep and lasting impression on readers. - Publishers Weekly Devastating - Frieze An extraordinary book. - Megan Nolan, New Statesman Will and Testament is a reminder that it's easier to hide darkness than face it ... Hjorth argues cogently that conflicts and atrocities often stem from what a nation represses or denies. - Observer Compelling ... Hjorth proves brilliant at revealing the stubborn, unredemptive quality of childhood suffering. - Lara Feigel, Guardian

This was a novel that people could enjoy either as high literature or as a work of down-and-dirty revenge. The tabloids loved it as much as the broadsheets, and it became the bestselling novel of the year. - Guardian Hjorth parcels out the secrets with a precision worthy of Ibsen, so that the level of suspense is maintained up to the very last of the 343 pages. - Aftenposten Vigdis Hjorth's new novel is furious and wise, trembling and stringent. Wills and Testaments examines who owns the past. This is the novel in weaponised form. - NRK Its strong emotional truths take hold of you immediately - even before the family secret's consequences are made apparent: I dogeared page after page to mark off insights, movements, formulations. - Dagens Nyheter The strength of the novel lies in Bergljot's convincing and continuing vulnerability, in her mixed feelings and her flaws ... A clear-eyed and convincing story of a family's doomed attempt to reconcile and the limits of forgiveness. - Kirkus Vigdis Hjorth is one of my favorite contemporary writers - Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? In a ruthless yet patiently delivered work, Hjorth does something that few writers achieve: Will and Testament is both economical and overwhelming. - Elsa Court, Financial Times Will and Testament is a compulsively readable novel, one that turns questions of shame into weapons against silence. - Paris Review Hjorth's thoughtful, drily funny, and often devastating novel will leave a deep and lasting impression on readers. - Publishers Weekly Devastating - Frieze An extraordinary book. - Megan Nolan, New Statesman Will and Testament is a reminder that it's easier to hide darkness than face it ... Hjorth argues cogently that conflicts and atrocities often stem from what a nation represses or denies. - Observer Compelling ... Hjorth proves brilliant at revealing the stubborn, unredemptive quality of childhood suffering. - Lara Feigel, Guardian Even in the depths of family trauma, the scent of the forest, sea and meadow may still drift over the troubled cities and suburbs of Norwegian fiction. That forest may be a real place. It may also, as in Will and Testament, be a longed-for state of mind. - Boyd Tonkin, Norwegian Arts Hypnotic - John Williams, New York Times Book Review A powerfully humane novel about inheritance, trauma and the inheritance of trauma - Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

Vigdis Hjorth was born in 1959. She grew up in Oslo and has lived in Copenhagen, Bergen, Switzerland and France. She is the author of over a dozen novels. She has won numerous liteary awards in Scandinavia, including the Dobloug Prize in 2018.

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