Nominated for the Listeners’ Novel Prize 2022

To be a human being was a cheap coincidence. A wrong turn, almost. Everyone who worked at a hospital had seen the tragedy so many times, it peeled off as soon as you left the room. It could be sad, more than sad, but anyhow: you moved on, onto the next patient waiting, and if you were to dwell on whatever happened in the room next door, you would have to find yourself a new job. He knew this. He just couldn’t get himself to grasp it. This time it was unforgivable. This time it had to do with him.

The talented surgeon Henrik Wold has organized his life around his career and is now aiming for the department’s chief position. Life is quite simple for Henrik – until a young patient develops inexplicable complications after a standard procedure. For the first time in his professional life, he feels insecure, and the pressure evolves around him, both at work and at home.

What happens when someone who pictures himself as invincible makes a mistake? What is revealed when the façade starts to crack? When does the surgeon’s pragmatic cynicism turn into destructiveness? And what is a human life worth?

With a brilliant take on human psychology, and a trained eye for comic interactions, Ida Hegazi Høyer takes us along on a two-week downhill journey in Henrik Wold’s life.