Christian is all alone in a hut deep in the forest. He hasn’t seen a living soul for more than a week. The former boarding house owner of Holmen lost his life’s work and his home when the boarding house was sold off and razed to the ground. His wife Magda-Marie is dead. In an attempt to hold on to something, he keeps a diary. But he has started doubting that what he observes around him is really happening.

The First Words is a concentrated, ceaselessly probing novel of grief and disappearance, about unrestrained destruction and unfathomable quiet, and about our ability to understand what happens to us when words fail. Erland Kiøsterud masterfully combines descriptions of nature with inner reflection in a novel that has great allegorical power.

The First Words concludes the trilogy that started with The Work of Hands (2015) and continued with The Revelation (2018).