AshehougAgency

Zürich

Ruth Vik, a teacher of fifty-something and divorced mother of one, has taken a room at a suicide clinic in Zurich. Everything is prepeared and taken care of, all that remains is the final action.

In a series of flashbacks we learn about Ruth’s road to depression, her upbringing and youth in a small town on lake Mjøsa, her dominating mother who wants to see her daughter well married to the handsome Jonas. We learn about her formative experience of moving to England to study literature, and her deep infatuation with her teacher Stephen. Ruth experiences life, love and literature all at once – but Stephen is killed in a road accident and instead she marries Jonas and gives birth to their daughter Miriam.

Within her inconsolable existence Ruth creates a space for herself with literature: she keeps a diary in which she writes about her relationship to Stephen and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Wenche-Britt Hagabakken builds a bridge between Ruth and Emily Dickinson, between the 21st century and the 18th – between the fate of one unfortunate woman and another.

In crystal-clear prose, full of wisdom and human insight, Hagabakken tells the story of a woman’s crisis in life – and her right to decide her own fate. Hagabakken made her debut in 2004 with the acclaimed novel Gjenopprettelsen (The Restoration).

Praise for Zürich:

The novel Zürich meets all the expectations created with Hagabakken’s first book. The novel stands out as a complex and complicated work that touches the reader by virtue of the sincerity and the decisiveness with which it has been carried out.
Turid Larsen, Dagsavisen

First published: Aschehoug fiction 2006
Wenche-Britt Hagabakken: Biography and bibliography