AshehougAgency

The Arsenic Tower

When Therese’s grandmother Amalie Jebsen dies in Copenhagen, her daughter in Oslo is delighted. Therese is not. How could this failed cabaret star be a tyrannising and loveless mother and a warm and kind grandmother, all at once? And why did her husband stick with her through all these years – was his love for her really that powerful?

The book is separated into five parts which each illuminates Amalie’s life from different angles, her daughter’s, her granddaughter’s, her husband’s and her own. In the last part where the childhood of the main character’s mother is described, we discover the reasons why Amalie became who she was, and the secrets of tense relationship between her and her husband. Eventually the story takes you back where it started – to Therese.

The Arsenic Tower tells the story of three generations of women, and their lives through the dramatic 20th century. It is a novel about royal Danish porcelain, about children’s innocent cruelty and most of all about dreams of grandeur. A great, fabulous tale, based on thorough research, and written in a lyrical prose.

Praise for The Arsenic Tower:

“her most passionate novel … In her new novel, the Norwegian writer grips the reader from the very first page … a book which is as enchanting as it is cruel.”
(Le Figaro, France)

“This fantastic, infinitely brutal text describes three generations of women, with all they’ve been through, everything they have concealed … in this beautiful text we again see the author’s ability to construct all her characters in the most meticulous way, to give each and every one of them a voice of their own, a body language, a fate … This author, who writes books in rapid succession that become bestsellers all over the world, has a shocking honesty, a sense of humour that endures everything and a never-ending concern for the world.”
(L’Express, France)

“a beautiful and dramatic family saga which stretches back to the 19th century and explores the whole spectre of human emotions.”
(Elle, France)

“The Arsenic Tower is far from the navel-gazing, self-examining books that are fashionable these days … How come some novelists take hold of you and keep you in their grip, make you smile knowingly, laugh uncontrollably, and evoke, with no sentimentality whatsoever, melancholy in you? It is an enormous gift to be able to tell stories and write novels. This is a gift Anne B. Ragde most definitely have.”
(Le Canard Enchâiné, France)

“The book you need to read this week”
(Grazie, France)

“Impressive family saga … Without making any great stylistic innovations, Ragde depicts different times and social circles with an impressive wealth of details of different times and social circles, … With THE ARSENIC TOWER … steps forward as an outstanding Scandinavian storyteller.”
(Politiken, Denmark)

”... in many ways a more serious and emotionally combustible book than the [Berlin Poplar] trilogy ... vivid and colourful ... Ragde’s books have breadth and intimacy – and not least a contagious love of the crooked and self contradictory. In other words: bestseller potential.”
(Information, Denmark)

“A magnificent novel”
(Adresseavisen)

“A tremendous book, a real entertainment novel in the literal sense of the word, one of those that pulls the reader along from the first page until the last… and there is not a single dull point on any of them”
(NRK, Kulturnytt)

“A great family chronicle about three generations of women that demonstrates to what extent coincidences often have far-reaching consequences for our descendants”
(Østlands-Posten)

First published: 2001, Tiden Publishing House
Anne B. Ragde: Biography and bibliography

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