Against Nature

a love story unlike any other ... wins you over with its concentrated calmness, by being so direct, unaffected and irresistible ... a masterpiece of literary understatement. Everybody who has recently been thirsting for a new, unexhausted realism, like water in the desert, will love this book.

Tomas Espedal has a personally centred literary project that he pursues and expands with fascinating force and consistency.

Espedal's writing sparkles ...

AGAINST NATURE is one of the year's most powerful and original books.

AGAINST NATURE is quite simply a love story that draws the reader in with such power, and which speaks directly to everyone who has experienced a reverse in love, or wonders how one feels.

What makes Espedal a writer in the top flight is his ability to invest the seemingly everyday with distinctive linguistic resonance. Espedal makes use of the rich register of connotation in literary language, just like a poet.

... I was moved to the core by this revelation of a book. I know of no other Norwegian author who writes so movingly about sorrow.

In his recent work, Espedal has fused poetry with autobiography in a unique, Norwegian style. AGAINST NATURE is a perspectival and personal treatment of an old theme: unattainable love. He writes it to pieces, then puts it together again, in long, conflicting movements.