Hugendubel.info - Die B2B Online-Buchhandlung 

Merkliste
Die Merkliste ist leer.
Bitte warten - die Druckansicht der Seite wird vorbereitet.
Der Druckdialog öffnet sich, sobald die Seite vollständig geladen wurde.
Sollte die Druckvorschau unvollständig sein, bitte schliessen und "Erneut drucken" wählen.

The Guests

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
276 Seiten
Englisch
Orenda Bookserschienen am18.01.2024
A young couple are entangled in a nightmare spiral of lies when they pretend to be someone else ...Exquisitely dark psychological suspense by the international bestselling author of The Bird Tribunal `A delightfully insightful and wicked little read ... Like the cabin, it´s so minimalist and stark and at the same time so compelling´ Elizabeth Haynes ________ It started with a lie... Married couple Karin and Kai are looking for a pleasant escape from their busy lives, and reluctantly accept an offer to stay in a luxurious holiday home in the Norwegian fjords. Instead of finding a relaxing retreat, however, their trip becomes a reminder of everything lacking in their own lives, and in a less-than-friendly meeting with their new neighbours, Karin tells a little white lie... Against the backdrop of the glistening water and within the claustrophobic walls of the ultra-modern house, Karin´s insecurities blossom, and her lie grows ever bigger, entangling her and her husband in a nightmare spiral of deceits with absolutely no means of escape... Simmering with suspense and dark humour, The Guests is a gripping psychological drama about envy and aspiration ... and something more menacing, hiding just below that glittering surface... _____ Praise for Agnes Ravatn **Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award** **A BBC Book at Bedtime** **Shortlisted for the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Fiction** **Winner of an English PEN Translation Award** `A clever, quirky mystery, full of twists and reminiscent of Agatha Christie at her best´ The Times `Ravatn, one of Norway´s premier crime writers, manages to conjure up an extra level of chilling atmosphere that will make you want to put the heating on´ The Sun `An unrelenting atmosphere of doom fails to prepare readers for the surprising resolution´ Publishers Weekly `Unfolds in an austere style that perfectly captures the bleakly beautiful landscape of Norway's far north´ Irish Times `Reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith and I can't offer higher praise than that. Agnes Ravatn is an author to watch´ Philip Ardagh `A tense and riveting read´ Financial Times `Crackling, fraught and hugely compulsive slice of Nordic Noir tremendously impressive´ Big Issue `Intriguing ... enrapturing´ Sarah Hilary `A masterclass in suspense and delayed terror´ Rod Reynolds

Agnes Ravatn (b. 1983) is an author and columnist. She made her literary début with the novel Week 53 (Veke 53) in 2007. Since then she has written three critically acclaimed and award-winning essay collections: Standing still (Stillstand), 2011, Popular Reading (Folkelesnad), 2011, and Operation self-discipline (Operasjon sjøldisiplin), 2014. In these works Ravatn shows her unique, witty voice and sharp eye for human fallibility. Ravatn received the Norwegian radio channel radio NRK P2 Listener's Novel Prize for this novel, a popular and important prize in Norway, in addition to the Youth Critic's Award for The Bird Tribunal which also made into a successful play, and premiered in Oslo in 2015.mehr
Verfügbare Formate
TaschenbuchKartoniert, Paperback
EUR13,00
E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
EUR9,59

Produkt

KlappentextA young couple are entangled in a nightmare spiral of lies when they pretend to be someone else ...Exquisitely dark psychological suspense by the international bestselling author of The Bird Tribunal `A delightfully insightful and wicked little read ... Like the cabin, it´s so minimalist and stark and at the same time so compelling´ Elizabeth Haynes ________ It started with a lie... Married couple Karin and Kai are looking for a pleasant escape from their busy lives, and reluctantly accept an offer to stay in a luxurious holiday home in the Norwegian fjords. Instead of finding a relaxing retreat, however, their trip becomes a reminder of everything lacking in their own lives, and in a less-than-friendly meeting with their new neighbours, Karin tells a little white lie... Against the backdrop of the glistening water and within the claustrophobic walls of the ultra-modern house, Karin´s insecurities blossom, and her lie grows ever bigger, entangling her and her husband in a nightmare spiral of deceits with absolutely no means of escape... Simmering with suspense and dark humour, The Guests is a gripping psychological drama about envy and aspiration ... and something more menacing, hiding just below that glittering surface... _____ Praise for Agnes Ravatn **Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award** **A BBC Book at Bedtime** **Shortlisted for the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Fiction** **Winner of an English PEN Translation Award** `A clever, quirky mystery, full of twists and reminiscent of Agatha Christie at her best´ The Times `Ravatn, one of Norway´s premier crime writers, manages to conjure up an extra level of chilling atmosphere that will make you want to put the heating on´ The Sun `An unrelenting atmosphere of doom fails to prepare readers for the surprising resolution´ Publishers Weekly `Unfolds in an austere style that perfectly captures the bleakly beautiful landscape of Norway's far north´ Irish Times `Reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith and I can't offer higher praise than that. Agnes Ravatn is an author to watch´ Philip Ardagh `A tense and riveting read´ Financial Times `Crackling, fraught and hugely compulsive slice of Nordic Noir tremendously impressive´ Big Issue `Intriguing ... enrapturing´ Sarah Hilary `A masterclass in suspense and delayed terror´ Rod Reynolds

Agnes Ravatn (b. 1983) is an author and columnist. She made her literary début with the novel Week 53 (Veke 53) in 2007. Since then she has written three critically acclaimed and award-winning essay collections: Standing still (Stillstand), 2011, Popular Reading (Folkelesnad), 2011, and Operation self-discipline (Operasjon sjøldisiplin), 2014. In these works Ravatn shows her unique, witty voice and sharp eye for human fallibility. Ravatn received the Norwegian radio channel radio NRK P2 Listener's Novel Prize for this novel, a popular and important prize in Norway, in addition to the Youth Critic's Award for The Bird Tribunal which also made into a successful play, and premiered in Oslo in 2015.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9781916788008
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2024
Erscheinungsdatum18.01.2024
Seiten276 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse863 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.13445163
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe



Rather than feeling dejected at having been treated like rubbish for collection by our neighbour, I was weirdly fired up. The spontaneous elegance I´d shown when deflecting his comments - so forthright and dynamic, and delivered with such sparkle - had highlighted his miserly dismissal of a woman he didn´t know, and was a stark contrast to my optimistic, liberal view of humanity.

Just as I made it to the top of the last hill before reaching our cabin, I caught sight of Kai, who was sweating over his work down by the water´s edge, and it occurred to me who the man with the fishing rod was.

It was Per Sinding. The author. Though he was most famously and unavoidably known for being the spouse of another author, the eminent Hilma Ekhult, whose renown completely eclipsed his.

They were so famous that they didn´t even live in Norway. Nor did they live in New York, for that matter, which would have made them seem a bit comical or pathetic, really, a poor imitation of Siri Hustvedt and Paul Auster. They were too big for Norway but too small for New York. No, I was sure they lived in Stockholm, which was statement enough in itself: Norway? No thanks. But its closest neighbour? Sure!

Per Sinding had been indignant. Indignant at the fact that an ordinary woman had dared set foot on his private property, or his wife´s, as the case may be, since I was fairly certain that of the two of them, she was the only one who actually earned a crust. Per Sinding lived off her the way a chaga mushroom lives off a birch tree. It was thanks to her that he could afford to write his own navel-gazing novels and stand around fishing - fishing with the same fruitless results he saw from his writing, and yet still he felt that he had the right to turn others away with two simple words, private property´, both of which he´d scarcely bothered to articulate properly.

This was the great humanist´ Per Sinding, I´d read several interviews he´d given where he came out with cryptic statements about his books, work that didn´t seem as difficult to understand as he liked to make out - examples of bitter, self-obsessed autofiction focused on the conflict on his mother´s side of the family, ruminations on bad decisions he´d made in the past and obligatory reflections on his own identity, all interspersed with ponderings over the problematic role of men in society.

He was always photographed with the same calculated expression on his face, solemn and stern, his eyes slightly screwed up and surrounded by deep wrinkles, preferably posing under a tree, burdened by no end of pain.

In addition to his narcissistic interviews, he specialised in pompous sermons delivered via op-eds whenever a new crisis arose, preferably humanitarian in nature - he´d refer to his own humanity with passionate zeal, pointing a finger that trembled with rage not only at our elected representatives, but also, rather tactlessly, at all of us.

And yet, he couldn´t bear ... I started thinking, then realised that my thoughts about Per Sinding were going round in circles, I needed to pull myself out of this spiral, to rise above it.

I shouted down to Kai, who waved back at me, then made my way inside and grabbed the iPad, which was lying on the intimidatingly vast kitchen worktop; I sank down in a chair by the dining table, and this time around I searched Hilma Ekhult + cabin´.

In-depth interviews in holiday homes were clearly a genre of their own. I found no fewer than three extensive interviews with Hilma Ekhult, all conducted in her cabin in late summer, and all in connection with a new book, so sheer self-promotion, really, I thought to myself, letting out a little snort as I skimmed the sections outlining the serious themes in her upcoming novel, combined with animated depictions of nostalgic childhood summers spent in this very spot, a never-ending omnibus of small-screen nostalgia, a Fanny and Alexander summer special, a big, blurred family in technicolour.

Per Sinding´s specialty was bouillabaisse prepared with his own catch, I read, he would serve it up for all the eminent guests who brought their boats up alongside the jetty during the summer months. I could picture them now. Men in pale linen suits with well-trimmed goatees and monocles, members of the Swedish Academy and renowned psychoanalysts, women tottering onto land in high heels, wearing hats that resembled fruit bowls.

I couldn´t say that Hilma Ekhult came across as particularly exceptional in any of the three interviews I read. She was too measured, everything was too orchestrated, from the delectable pie made with homegrown berries and the freshly brewed coffee in the daintiest of old-fashioned porcelain cups to the ice-cold elderflower cordial and the comments she made, everything was too well thought-out, she didn´t slip up even once; Hilma Ekhult was astute and highly knowledgeable in her interviews and her writing, she quoted great thinkers from east and west alike without difficulty - though never any Norwegians, that would be too trifling and provincial.

Even in her depictions of seemingly carefree summers at the cabin, which had been in Hilma Ekhult´s family for as long as the antique coffee pot and porcelain cups, she said - she made it sound as if it was a case of several centuries, rather than decades - she was very careful to highlight the fact that her memories were distinct from other ordinary people´s happy memories of summer days by the sea.

Briefly, and laden with insinuation, she spoke about the anxiety she´d always felt when it came to what she called the depths´, feeding her interviewers tiny drips of information about how she would lie on her stomach on the jetty as a child and stare into the dark water, captivated, while all around her she heard the sounds of laughter and play, she talked about the pull she had felt, as if she were being enticed downwards, as if these depths she spoke of threatened to swallow her whole. Hilma Ekhult doled out these titbits of information in all three interviews to make very clear that she had been a unique child.

The most recent interview was seven years old. Hilma Ekhult hadn´t published a novel or given any further interviews in the years since then, as far as I could make out. I read the articles with a stern expression on my face, grunting every time she said something wise´, yet also well aware that it wasn´t a dislike for Hilma Ekhult that was to blame, but an underlying sense of indignation at having been well and truly dismissed by Per Sinding.

In truth, Hilma Ekhult was one of my favourite authors. I had read everything she´d ever written. Her novels had moved me deeply when I was in my twenties; back then, I´d read with an openness to anything and everything that seemed existentially relevant, as one does at that age.

But Hilma Ekhult was the real deal, she wrote with a sense of urgency, or at least that was my take at the time, and I´d felt the same in my thirties when a further two novels were published. She was absolutely the real deal, which was why it was so surprising when she married Per Sinding.

But wasn´t that the case when it came to almost all artists? One always had an authenticity the other lacked. And oddly enough, in most of these cases, it was the woman who was authentic and the man who was found wanting, the woman was sincere and the man was a show-off. Both suffered in their own ways, but one suffered for real and the other for pretend, as my boys used to say back in their pre-school days, and as I still tended to say, uncertain whether it was a childlike way of putting it or not.

Hilma Ekhult wrote Ibsen-esque modern tragedies reminiscent of chamber plays. They were accessible and intellectual all at once. The key to Hilma Ekhult´s success, in my eyes at least, was that she pandered to the sophisticated frontal lobe through her thoroughly considered, cool linguistic choices and her precise, restrained depictions, all while her intricately forged plots set among the upper echelons of society - her protagonists tended to be art gallery CEOs, heads of departments, successful architects and the like - and revelations from the past appealed to the more primitive parts of our brains, those that revelled in gossip and sex and self-assertion.

Her novels had been reviewed in the New Yorker, and she was the only Norwegian author to be interviewed in depth by the Paris Review.

But now she was here.

I opened the map and first checked out my own cabin from above, the grey rooftop that looked like two rectangles that had collided at a 120-degree angle, the patio, the old jetty down by the almost-white rock, and the sea beyond that, turquoise at first, then suddenly almost black.

Then I followed the path I´d tried taking, along by the water initially, then zigzagging until Hilma Ekhult´s cabin came into view beyond a headland, located in a snug little bay of its own. Considerably smaller than the cabin I was sitting in, but with a great deal more soul, and more foliage too; I´d caught a glimpse of a small row of deciduous trees towards the back of the property that cast a pleasant shade.

I zoomed in close. A row of small benches and chairs came into view, arranged around what could be a stone table, there...

mehr

Autor

Agnes Ravatn (b. 1983) is an author and columnist. She made her literary début with the novel Week 53 (Veke 53) in 2007. Since then she has written three critically acclaimed and award-winning essay collections: Standing still (Stillstand), 2011, Popular Reading (Folkelesnad), 2011, and Operation self-discipline (Operasjon sjøldisiplin), 2014. In these works Ravatn shows her unique, witty voice and sharp eye for human fallibility. Ravatn received the Norwegian radio channel radio NRK P2 Listener's Novel Prize for this novel, a popular and important prize in Norway, in addition to the Youth Critic's Award for The Bird Tribunal which also made into a successful play, and premiered in Oslo in 2015.