Gunnhild Øyehaug

From the author of Wait, Blink and Knots, Gunnhild Øyehaug's Present Tense Machine is a playful and transcendent novel about language, family, and parallel universes. On an ordinary day in Bergen, Norway, in the late 1980s, Anna is reading in the garden while her two-year-old daughter, Laura, plays on her tricycle. Then, in one startling moment, Anna misreads a word, an alternate universe opens up, and Laura disappears. Twenty years or so later, life has gone on as if nothing happened, but in each of the women’s lives, something is not quite right. Both Anna and Laura continue to exist, but they are invisible to each other and forgotten in each other’s worlds. Both are writers and amateur pianists. They are married; Anna had two more children after Laura disappeared, and Laura is expecting a child of her own. They worry about their families, their jobs, the climate—and whether this reality is all there is. In the exquisite, wistful, slyly profound Present Tense Machine, Gunnhild Øyehaug—called “one of the most exciting writers working today” by the bestselling author Jenny Offill—delivers another dazzling renovation of what fiction can do: a testament to the fact that language shapes the world.

A Novel

Present Tense Machine

A mesmerizing collection of playfully surreal stories from one of Norway’s most celebrated writers First published in Norway in 2004, Knots is Gunnhild Øyehaug’s radical collection of short stories that range from the surreal to the oddly mundane, and prod the discomforts of mental, sexual, and familial bonds. In both precise short-shorts and ruminative longer tales, Øyehaug meanders through the tangled, jinxed, and unavoidable conflicts of love and desire. From young Rimbaud’s thwarted passions to the scandalous disappearance of an entire family, these stories do the chilling work of tracing the outlines of what could have been in both the quietly morbid and the delightfully comical. A young man is born with an uncuttable umbilical cord and spends his life physically tethered to his mother; a tipsy uncle makes an uncomfortable toast with unforeseeable repercussions; and a dissatisfied deer yearns to be seen. As one character reflects, “You never know how things might turn out, you never know how anything will turn out, tomorrow the walls might fall down, the room disappear.” Cleverly balancing the sensuous, the surreal, and the comical, Øyehaug achieves a playful familiarity with the absurd that never overreaches the needs of her stories. Full of characters who can’t help tying knots in themselves and each other, these tales make the world just a little more strange, and introduce a major international voice of searing vision, grace, and humor.

Stories

Knots

[A] novel of interwoven stories following a group of artistic women pursuing their ambitions despite endless distractions and disappointments.

A Perfect Picture of Inner Life: A Novel

Wait, Blink

Kari Dickson

Evil Flowers

From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Present Tense Machine and Knots, a collection of playfully surreal stories about love, death, and metamorphosis. In Evil Flowers, a precise but madcap collection of short stories, Gunnhild Øyehaug extracts the bizarre from the mundane and reveals the strange, startling brilliance of everyday life. Across twenty-five stories, Øyehaug renovates the form again and again, confirming Lydia Davis’s observation that her every story is “a formal surprise, smart and droll.” The stories converse with, contradict, and expand on one another; birds, hagfish, and wild beasts reappear, gnawing at the fringes. A section of a woman’s brain slips into the toilet bowl, removing her ability to remember or recognize types of birds (particularly problematic because she is an ornithologist). Medicinal leeches ingest information from fiberoptic cables, and a new museum sinks into the ground. Inspired by Charles Baudelaire, a dreamer and romantic in the era of realism, Øyehaug revolts against the ordinary, reaching instead for the wonder to be found in fantasy and absurdity. Brimming with wit, ingenuity, and irrepressible joy, these stories mark another triumph from a dazzling international writer.

Vi vet att det här är svårt att tro på. Men så, och på inget annat sätt, var det som det hände. Anna och Laura är mor och dotter. Men i ett märkligt ögonblick på 90-talet delade sig världen och de blev fångna i varsitt universum. Tjugoett år senare har livet i norska Bergen gått vidare som om ingenting hänt, men i de två kvinnornas liv är det något som inte stämmer. Presens Maskin är en kärleksroman om ensamma människor, om oanade konsekvenser av felläsningar, märkliga ljus på himlen, syrener som blommar som bara syrener kan blomma (sinnessjukt syrenvitt), om barn, språk och obegripliga pianostycken -- och om människor, både som brist och närvaro. Gunnhild Øyehaug, född 1975, är bosatt i Bergen. Hennes första bok utkom 1998, och sedan dess har hon givit ut poesi, essäer, noveller och romaner och översatts till flera språk. För den amerikanska utgåvan av Vänta, blinka nominerades hon till det prestigefyllda National Book Award 2018.

Presens Maskin

roman

Presens maskin

Czekaj, mrugaj

noveller

Draumeskrivar

"Gunnhild Øyehaug is a magician of the highest rank."—Catherine Lacey On an ordinary day in Bergen, Norway, in the late 1990s, Anna is reading in the garden while her two-year-old daughter, Laura, plays on her tricycle. Then, in one startling moment, Anna misreads a word, an alternate universe opens up, and Laura disappears. Twenty years or so later, life has gone on as if nothing happened, but in each of the women’s lives, something is not quite right. Both Anna and Laura continue to exist, but they are invisible to each other and forgotten in each other’s worlds. Both are writers and amateur pianists. They are married; Anna had two more children after Laura disappeared, and Laura is expecting a child of her own. They worry about their families, their jobs, the climate—and whether this reality is all there is.

Gunnhild Øyehaug

Books

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