“With Globe, Sarah Smith Ogunbona (b. 1989) has written an impressive, finely crafted novel. The main character Hazel is a flight attendant, and the book elucidates and revolves around the peculiarities of her profession. In many ways Hazel and her colleagues lead artificial lives, without normal circadian rhythms or seasons. The cramped air cabin forces them into physical proximity with each other and with the passengers, and demands an ability to maintain mental distance in order to endure. The frequent flashbacks to Hazel’s growing up as a child of mixed ethnicity and her relationship to her sister and father, give greater psychological depth to the main character and expand the story’s resonance.”
The Vesaas First Book Award nomination jury statement

“The prose is concrete and detailed, in a way that makes you wonder where all the emotions went? They are as controlled as the bodies of the stewardesses, but thereby a torn stocking becomes a highly expressive image … The dry prose works especially well in its depictions of the ‘seamless coreogaphy’ of cramped airplanes, where the tiniest deviation has immediate consequences … As a metaphorical portrait of a state of mind, Globe is impressively precise. The routines aboard the plane  becomes a miniature model of a society where no one can shape neither themselves nor their life as they wish”
Klassekampen

“How do you get comfortable in roles that were shaped for someone very different from yourself? In Globe Sara Smith Ogunbona explores the individual’s place in the system, and looks for a manual that accepts variations … By revolving around the problem of not fitting in with the preset premises, Ogunbona shows our tendencies to build our systems around one type of body, a body which is often able-bodied, male, or, as in this case: white … The fact that the novel manages to make me look up from the story and out at the society it has been inscribed in, is one of its great strengths … A debut that lets little things resonate with larger contexts, and where boiling coffee is not a dull everyday activity but a window to a demanindg work day centred around providing service and care”
BLA

“A powerful debut about a flight attendant’s life up in the air … Globe distinguishes itself by its stylistic control, but also something far more. There are way to few novels about working life in Norwegian literature. We meet a plethora of interesting observations of passengers and travel in the novel … You feel observed and exposed. With wit and humour. Flying will never be the same again”
Aftenposten