The King’s Heart
By Gaute Heivoll
Description
With them are ten other sufferers. The year is 1775, and they are going to Copenhagen, to King Frederik’s Hospital, to be cured of the epidemic that has taken so many lives. But the crossing is not without danger, and the longer the voyage takes, the more the insanity increases among the patients. Meanwhile the father is witness to his daughter being slowly but surely consumed by the illness from inside. He has lost his wife and another child previously. He has only her left. Will she survive?
The King’s Heart is a compact, intense human drama, based on real historical events. From the pages emerges a pitch black world – an account of hell among the living – where death threatens at every turn. Yet the novel is shone through with the strongest emotion of all: love for a child. This is a masterly performance, a story written in almost hypnotic language, showing death and love in close proximity.
Gaute Heivoll (born 1978) is a prolific and varied author. He has written novels, short stories, poems and children’s books In 2010 he broke through with [], which won the Brage Prize the same year and was sold to eighteen countries. is Heivoll’s fifth novel.
Praise
With highly sophisticated prose, [Heivoll] depicts the relationship between a father and his plague stricken daughter during their voyage to Denmark in 1775 ... It's grand, without pathos and at the same time deeply moving in a real way
6/6 stars, Berlingske, DenmarkWith The King's Heart, Heivoll has added yet another engaging story to his ten-year old, industrious authorship
Weekendavisen, Denmark[A] sharp, heartbreaking story about the perseverance of paternal love
Jyllands-Posten, DenmarkTight, gloomy and beautiful
NRK P2This is one of the most painful but also most beautiful stories I have read for a long time ... The sentences have a shining clarity
DagsavisenWhat is perhaps most impressive in this at times slow novel is its strong inner suspense. A powerful flow rooted in the style, but also in the uncertainty of what will happen with the two main characters. In this the novel is like a greek drama
DagbladetAnother confirmation that Heivoll must be one of our finest young writers. When it's all over, I'm left with gratitude that he chose to take me along for this journey
DagsavisenHeivoll is best when he shows us the strong fear, feeling of powerlessness and homesickness that the father experiences both on the voyage across the Skagerrak and later, during the isolation at the hospital
