När Erik Davidsen och hans syster Inga går igenom sin avlidne fars tillhörigheter, hittar de ett brev från en kvinna. Brevet är skrivet när den norske fadern arbetade i Minnesota under depressionen. Erik återvänder till New York och bestämmer sig för att försöka förstå sin far genom att läsa hans efterlämnade papper. Annotation supplied by BTJ Sverige AB

Roman om livet och konsten. Läsaren får följa vänskapen mellan konsthistorikern Leo och konstnären Bill under tjugo år. De möts i 1970-talets New York och de bägge familjerna flyttar in i samma hyreshus där de delar både glädje och sorg.

After their fathers funeral, Erik and Inga Davidsen find a cryptic letter from an unknown woman among his papers, dating from his adolescence in rural Minnesota during the Depression. Returning to his psychiatric practice in New York, Erik sets about reading his fathers memoir, hoping to discover the man he never fully understood.

At the same time, another woman enters Eriks lonely, divorced life a beautiful Jamaican who moves into his garden flat with her small daughter. As Erik gets drawn into the cat-and-mouse tactics of someone who appears to be stalking her, he finds out that his sister Inga is also being threatened, by a journalist in possession of a wounding secret from her past.

A multi-layered novel that probes the mysteries of the heart and mind, THE SORROWS OF AN AMERICAN is compulsive, thought-provoking and profoundly affecting a novel that resonates long beyond the last page.

From the author of the international bestseller What I Loved, a provocative collection of autobiographical and critical essays about writing and writers.

Whether her subject is growing up in Minnesota, cross-dressing, or the novel, Hustvedt's nonfiction, like her fiction, defies easy categorization, elegantly combining intellect, emotion, wit, and passion. With a light touch and consummate clarity, she undresses the cultural prejudices that veil both literature and life and explores the multiple personalities that inevitably inhabit a writer's mind. Is it possible for a woman in the twentieth century to endorse the corset, and at the same time approach with authority what it is like to be a man? Hustvedt does. Writing with rigorous honesty about her own divided self, and how this has shaped her as a writer, she also approaches the works of others--Fitzgerald, Dickens, and Henry James--with revelatory insight, and a practitioner's understanding of their art.

Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved begins in New York in 1975, when art historian Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a SoHo gallery. He buys the work; tracks down the artist, Bill Wechsler; and the two men embark on a life-long friendship. Leo's story, which spans twenty-five years, follows the growing involvement between his family and Bill's--an intricate constellation of attachments that includes the two men, their wives, Erica and Violet, and their sons, Matthew and Mark.

The families live in the same New York apartment building, rent a house together in the summers and keep up a lively exchange of ideas about life and art, but the bonds between them are tested, first by sudden tragedy, and then by a monstrous duplicity that slowly comes to the surface. A beautifully written novel that combines the intimacy of a family saga with the suspense of a thriller, What I Loved is a deeply moving story about art, love, loss, and betrayal.

The protagonist of Siri Hustvedt's astonishing second novel The Enchantment of Lily Dahl is a heroine of the old style: tough, beautiful, and brave. Standing at the threshold of adulthood, she enters a new world of erotic adventure, profound but unexpected friendship, and inexplicable, frightening acts of madness. Lily's story is also the story of a small town--Webster, Minnesota--where people are brought together by a powerful sense of place, both geographical and spiritual. Here gossip, secrets, and storytelling are as essential to the bond among its people as the borders that enclose the town.

The real secret at the heart of the book is the one that lies between reality and appearances, between waking life and dreams, at the place where imagination draws on its transforming powers in the face of death.

När Mia Fredricksens man Boris efter trettio års äktenskap meddelar att han vill ta en paus, rasar Mias tillvaro samman. Efter en tid på sjukhus beslutar hon sig för att åka hem till sin familj. I mötet med sin 87-åriga mor och hennes väninnor blir hon varse att de alla på ett eller annat sätt har blivit lämnade.