This evening in late June, I ride my bike home from the pub, I have a stomachache from all the talking, along the main road down to the sawmill the sun hangs low and omnivorous, the orange ball over the hillside, so that the trees seem to glisten over the black ground, while the dirt road along the field shimmers like the ocean, every straw making waves. The cabin feels like a country, a destination. And I’m alone, of course, already like a stranger here, down where the road turns, by a field, this evening, the first time I hear the beast.

It’s true.

A small village in eastern Norway, a woman who has just moved there, a dog, a famous author, a social catastrophe. With a sharp eye for detail, Ida Hegazi Høyer has created a fictional universe that both fascinates, disturbs and amuses the reader, in this unusually strong debut novel.