Los Angeles is the main character in Anna Kleiva’s first book of prose, which through different perspectives and styles tries to map and understand this divided, sprawling American city. Travel journals from several encounters with L.A. between 2008 and 2017 are woven together with stories, conversations, and poetic as well as essayistic texts, and a certain Angelena’s letter to an unknown person.

Echo Mountain is about the city as a dream, myth and fiction, but also about the search for the voices, stories and realities that hide beneath the glittering façade. It’s a book about having a love affair with a city, about being attracted and being shut out, but also about seeing and describing: How can you write about a shifting, condradictory reality, that can neither be captured nor limited?