The Shadow And The Queen
Vaage, Lars Amund: Skuggen og dronninga”He said he realised, now, that he had been wrong. He had seen brown where all was green. He had mistaken blue for purple. Black had turned yellow, pink seemed orange. It was that bad. He had made high into low and grand into tiny. He had turned crying into laughter and the other way around. Love had become hatred. And he had made a tiny, silly woman into queen. ”
Mikal returns to his home town. He reluctantly goes to meet his grandmother Sara, who fell ill years ago and ended up in a mental hospital, and her son Samson, who also got sick.
What do you do when people you love disappear into moods, and worlds, you cannot access? How far can you hold their hand, without being pulled into their dark landscapes yourself?
The Shadow and the Queen is a gripping and disturbing novel about insanity and destructive love.
Click here for English sample translation.
Praise for The Shadow and the Queen:
”Painful and beautiful…one of our most exclusive authors, with his own linguistic rhythm, a blend of conscious naiveté of language, and of thematic precision. … It is a heart-wrenching read in all its simplicity. … Vaage is too much of a poet to write a dark novel. To the contrary: This book is colourful and pictorial. It is also a beautiful novel of childhood memories, and of how our inner images are built.”
DAGBLADET
”A superior depiction of the inner logic and horrifying consequences of so-called madness, as it is expressed in a small, vulnerable family in a transparent community… Vaage writes so well, and so urgently that it is painful to read…. Magically Vaage succeeds in uniting the outer story with the intimate psychological depictions… Vaage writes with rare intensity about subjects he has deep insight into, and he does this in a prose to be admired and enjoyed; varied, simple and complex, melodious and deeply poetic.”
6/6 stars, VG
“Masterly done” NRK
”If you remain unmoved by The Shadow and The Queen, you must be a troll. … I am not a lover of sentences such as ‘the most important book this fall.’ But after reading The Shadow and The Queen it is hard not to think that thought. Vaage’s book is nonetheless an extraordinarily beautiful novel that should ensure the author nominations to all of this fall’s book awards. “
DAGSAVISEN
”Vaage’s instrument is perception, through musical language… He tells us, from an intense insider perspective, about what happens to these people, in such a way that we are moved by it. Vaage gives them back their voices. It is no small achievement.”
MORGENBLADET
”a gripping, extraordinarily moving book in which the author closes in on the thematic of madness with the exploratory, contemplative and precise language of poetry”
DAG OG TID
”A striking and beautiful novel of madness.”
AFTENPOSTEN
”Lars Amund Vaage writes prose of the highest quality … this is a novel everyone should read.”
KLASSEKAMPEN
”A stirring, finely tuned depiction of a family with psychological problems, seen through a little boy in a Western Norwegian village”
ADRESSEAVISEN, ANNUAL FAVORITES
First published: 2010, Forlaget Oktober
Lars Amund Vaage: Biography and bibliography
