Girl, 1983

Over seven taut, sharp but elusive novels, the Norwegian writer Linn Ullmann has sought to refine experience into stories that carve order, even beauty, from a shadowed past … Girl, 1983 nods to Annie Ernaux, Marguerite Duras and other kindered literary spirits - but her method and manner has a tact and finesse all its own … If her fictions transcend the raw stuff of autobiography, they never deny the soil from which they spring … Ullmann crafts her words with unflagging care – Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times *Linn Ullmann’s writing, already distinct for its rare moral clarity, attains a new authority in Girl, 1983. It is the authority of focus, of a grip on life that grows more tenacious as its scope determinedly narrows. In the manner of Annie Ernaux, Ullmann uses the act of attention as a weapon against indifference. It is as though, by reconstructing the disorder of certain realities, she is able to confer sanity on them. Yet there is also a brightness and generosity to her work that seems to turn its themes - the powerlessness of youth and femininity, the intermingling of memory and shame - inside out – Rachel CuskLinn Ullmann’s new novel, Girl, 1983, is both beautiful and unsettling. A slow exploration of the narrator’s past becomes a quiet and disturbing interrogation of the world’s treatment of young women. Here beauty is a dangerous possession, drawing its owner into silence and complicity with those who would harm her. Brava to Ullmann for bravely taking on this dark subject, one which permeates our culture – Roxana RobinsonAn engrossing, intimate narrative … award-winning novelist Ullmann meditates on memory, anxiety, and loss in a disquieting tale … In precise, lyrical prose, Ullmann creates a captivating portrait of a woman in search of herself, caught in a spiral of fear and loneliness * Kirkus *Linn Ullmann has mastered the art of seeing into the dark mysteries that make us who we areAmong Norway’s contemporary writers, Ullmann might be the finest sentence by sentence * John Freeman, LitHub *Ullmann is masterfully precise with language, pinning a wealth of detail in a simple phrase * Time Out *Ullmann’s grasp of the ambiguous natures of her people and her understanding of their background is admirably strong … she has a keenness of ear and eye, and a sharpness of mind, that is all her own * Independent *

Linn Ullmann is one of the most prominent voices in contemporary Scandinavian literature. Her novels have been translated into over twenty languages, and she has received numerous awards, including the Amalie Skram Prize, the Dobloug Prize and the Aschehoug Prize - all for her collected body of work. Girl, 1983 was nominated for the prestigious Nordic Council Literature Prize, as was its predecessor Unquiet, published by Hamish Hamilton in 2020. The two novels form part of an ongoing trilogy, meditating on memory, rage and desire.