Maria Kjos Fonn has quickly become one of the most important and powerful literary voices of our time. Her ability and willingness to courageously show how people struggle on the margins has earned her great critical acclaim and nominations for several important awards, including the Brage Prize. Life and death, addiction, mental illness, neglect and suicidal behaviour: The author doesn't shy away from life's darkest themes, but she approaches her characters with great wisdom, and with a devil-may-care humour that makes it bearable to read. It feels so real that you'd think it was autobiographical, but it's not; rather, in addition to her compassionate empathy, Kjos Fonn has an intellectual and knowledgeable approach to her material. The reader of Kjos Fonn's novels is left deeply affected and with a stronger understanding of how life unfolds at the very edge of an existential abyss - and this is precisely where literature works at its very best.
