Ada lives with her husband Sigurd and two small children in northwest Oslo. Almost every evening she pulls on her running shoes, turns on her headlamp, and disappears into the darkness along the paths of the forest. This summer she intends to complete the 100-kilometre-long Nordmarka Ultra, and in each step, each training session, a portrait of an extraordinary woman emerges. Passionate, almost obsessed, with a severe, almost venomous gaze and a childhood filled with apocalyptic delusions that to a large extent she still carries inside her.

In the tension between who she is for others and who she is within herself, a chasm opens up which eventually seems impossible to overcome. The closer the ultra-marathon approaches, the more urgent the question becomes: What is it about Ada?

Praise:

“Heidi Mittun-Kjos has written a book that is light-footed, but leaves a deep impression – physically, mentally and emotionally.”
Vårt Land

“Areas of Special Significance is an entertaining and dependable novel about how the fits and starts of childhood can go on in someone whose feet are never firmly planted on the ground. As a writer, Mittun-Kjos is fine, smart and funny and she lets her characters emerge at their own pace.”
Klassekampen

“On the whole, it seems as though there is a growing distance between Ada and the rest of the family, but the process is imperceptible, and for this particular reader it is like seeing the moon move across the sky: One sees that it has happened, but not that it is happening. For the author to achieve this is a great accomplishment, and readers are definitely given the sense of being let in on reality and truth while it is unfolding.”
Dag & Tid

“Now that she is debuting with her novel Areas of Special Significance, Heidi Mittun-Kjos is a new star in the constellation of authors.”
Tine Sundal, Blog

“Heidi Mittun-Kjos hits our present age on the head with a superb naturalness … Kjos has written a novel that makes biblical references, long-distance running and contemporary analysis to add up to greater than the sum of its parts.”
Aftenposten

Heidi Mittun-Kjos

Publications