Near Distance

＂Stoltenberg’s elegant prose makes each scene . . . so engaging that it gives plot a bad name.＂--John Self, The Guardian

For her entire life, Karin has fled from anything and anyone that tries to possess her. Her job demands nothing, she mostly socializes with men she meets online, and she’s rarely in touch with Helene, her adult daughter. But when Helene’s marriage is threatened, she turns, uncharacteristically, to her mother for commiseration and a long weekend away in London. As the two women embark on their uneasy companionship, Karin’s past, and the origins of her studied detachments are cast in a new light, and she can no longer ignore their effects--on not only herself and her own relationships, but on her daughter’s as well.

An unnerving, closely observed study of character--and the choices we do and do not make--Near Distance introduces Hanna Stoltenberg as writer of piercing insight and uncommon lucidity.

Hanna Stoltenberg (born 1989) grew up in Oslo and studied English at the University of Bristol. She is a regular contributor to the Norwegian literary journal Vinduet and works as an editor at the Munch museum. Her first novel, Near Distance (Nada in Norwegian) was published in 2019. It won the prestigious Tarjei Vesaas first book award and the NATT&DAG Oslo prize for best literary work. She is currently working on her second novel.

Wendy Harrison Gabrielsen moved to Oslo in 1987 after completing an MA in Translation at the University of Surrey. She has translated works of fiction as well as nonfiction, and in 2022 she was awarded the Wigeland Prize by the American-Scandinavian Foundation for an excerpt from her translation of Hanna Stoltenberg’s Near Distance.