AshehougAgency

A Foreign Country

A Foreign Country is a story about the relationship between interior and exterior landscapes, told through Hege. In the course of a few months, she is confronted by several important experiences: She is pregnant, her grandfather is dying, the age long relationship with her boyfriend Harald is about to dissolve.

The setting for this novel is the little home town in Telemark, where the plot gradually uncovers some of the structures that form a life. Through reproductions of incidents such as the heavy water campaign during WW2 and, more recently, the hostage drama in Dubrovkateateret, Hege slowly starts to see new features of these events, something that gets consequences for her own life. A journey to the Jewish neighbourhood in Vienna sheds light upon a part of her grandfather’s hidden history. It also marks how great an impact unmade choices can have on a life.

Hege’s unrest and intensity, her power and will to probe into hidden stories, reflect a deep human urge for challenging the existing. A Foreign Country also demonstrates how individuals are necessarily shaped by the landscape in which they grow up.

First published: 2006, Aschehoug Fiction

Aasne Linnestå: Biography and bibliography