“A heartbreaking apocalyptic novel about caring for others and war. A sensitive and outstanding novel … I was gripped, sucked in by the prose, by Lindstrøm’s ability to express the sense of disintegration and doom that the wanderers are consumed by. It is both completely singular and universal … Lindstrøm’s novel is an example of what literature can do. North is certainly not a story that takes the reader by the hand and leads her along the beaten path. But if you stick with it, things start happening: The language opens up, every comma carries meaning, and you can’t help but coming along”
5/6 stars, Politiken, Denmark

“A timeless, dark fairy tale of war and homelessness … As a fable rich in imagery about people fleeing from the landscapes of war, the novel North has a pressing relevance”
Berlingske, Denmark

“North is a terrifyingly beautiful novel. Beauty seeps through the ruin, just as nature reclaims the abandoned houses … North is strangely slow, very dark and extremely uncomfortable. Both frustrating and powerful in its insistence on portraying human destruction”
Information, Denmark

“North is dark and brilliant and, in spite of all its sadness and destruction, an unexpectedly beautiful novel”
Sveriges Radio, Sweden

“Lindstrøm is a master when it comes to writing about quiet and silence. Short scenes charged with uncomfortable atmosphere and a feeling of an impending catastrophe … Merethe Lindstrøm is astonishingly good, some of the scenes are among the strongest I’ve read about the vulnerability of children who have been left to themselves … North is a story that demands patience of the reader, that she slowly sinks down into the same slow breathing. The reader becomes one with the wandering children. Everything is executed in a quaveringly sensitive way”
Aftonbladet, Sweden

“Literary magic … gorgeous prose, at the same time dreamily opaque and translucently sensuous … By and large North is such an atmospheric story that I have difficulties letting go of the book – there are scenes and sentences here that are pure literary magic. It’s a novel that poses the timeless question of how we can preserve our humanity, when everything is taken away from us, and that question can be formulated as beautifully as this.”
Sydsvenskan, Sweden

“Lindstrøm’s new novel is both ethically binding and politically relevant. Like few others Merethe Lindstrøm captures vulnerable people in vulnerable situations in striking images. In our time’s absence of empathetic will to understand people fleeing, North – her ninth novel – becomes an argument for the opposite. In an ethically binding story, she gives literary shape to the life conditions of refugees, in a way that leaves a burning impression on the reader”
Vårt Land

“Luminous, powerful prose … The first-person voice carries the book, and makes it a literary experience of high class … Merethe Lindstrøm offers a redemptive contrast to the darkness she portrays, through the luminous, power of her prose. The human element radiates from the 17 year old’s vision of his surroundings, a depiction full of poetry and images … The prose is teeming with beautiful metaphors … Lindstrøm has written a very beautiful and intense book, full of bleak perspectives and visions of the future. But with a hope that the human element, perhaps what we can call the soul, in spite of everything has a chance of surviving – also in the cruelest and most meaningless circumstances”
5/6 stars, Dagbladet

“One of contemporary Norwegian literature’s most finely tuned observers and portrayers of the interplay between people who are (seemingly) close … The mythical and mystical about the main character, the landscape, the rows of marching people, yes, the whole premise of the novel gives the story a unique momentum, while certain scenes demonstrate the brutal face of war … stylistic qualities on a level far above the mainstream of contemporary Norwegian literature”
Morgenbladet

“A low-key, frightening novel about what happens to people when the war ends and peace comes roaring … More than a study of war and peace, this novel is about how hostile images of the others are created, about excluding those who are different, about how demanding it is to act civilized towards people you don’t know, and who might be in a sorry state … Through her portrait of the nameless and homeless existences shuffling through a vague, post-war Europe, Lindstrøm shows us a crystal clear, frightening image of what is at stake. North is a small novel that enters a well-known landscape and makes us see it with new eyes. That’s what novels are for”
NRK P2

“A deeply upsetting novel about outsiders on the run … upsetting seriousness combined with the literary freedom and interpretative depths of the fable … as always Lindstrøm writes razor sharp prose, and this time I get associations to the Albanian Ismail Kadare. The novel is composed in an exemplary fashion, where the situation is gradually uncovered, and fable-like elements increases the interpretative depths”
Adresseavisen