Winner of the New Norwegian Prize for Literature

The main character in Marit Tusvik’s debut novel, The Ice House, is Mads, a young man struggling to free himself from his childhood and the place he grew up. His hunger for freedom leads to him try his luck in the big, wide world, to choose another path than the one his four older siblings chose: running the farm in the village of fertile Western Norway. There he would have been squeezed between his mild sisters who long to get away, and his psychopathic brothers who are brutalizing the others.

Marit Tusvik has written a well crafted story about the child, violinist and café owner Mads. It is a novel of personal development, a love novel and an artist’s novel.