Fossum novel to be published in the UK
Norwegian author Karin Fossum’s ‘Broken’ will be published by Harvill Secker in the UK on 12 June 2008. The crime writer will also attend the Crimefest in Bristol on 5 – 8 June as a guest author, along with Ian Rankin.
A woman wakes one night to find a stranger in her bedroom and lies there in terrified silence. The woman is an author and the stranger one of her prospective characters. So desperate is he to have his story told that he has resorted to breaking in to her house to make her tell it.
She creates Alvar Eide. Forty-two and single, he works in an art gallery and lives a quiet, dutiful life. One winter’s day Alvar’s carefully designed life begins to unravel, when an emaciated young heroin addict walks into the gallery. Alvar gives her a cup of coffee to warm her up, unaware that this act of kindness will have terrible consequences. She returns again and then one day appears at his home demanding to be let in. Interspersed with these chapters of Alvar’s story are his encounters with its author – the frantic attempts of a fictional man trying to control his own destiny.
Fossum’s crime novels have been praised for showing a compassion that is rare to crime writing. In ‘Broken’, Fossum again demonstrates such empathy through her painfully real characters and this gripping departure from crime writing marks her as writer of great skill and versatility.
Karin Fossum made her literary debut in 1974. She is the author of poetry, short stories, this non-crime novel and the acclaimed Inspector Sejer Mysteries, which have been published in sixteen languages. Fossum won the Glass Key award and the Riverton Prize for her novel ‘Don't Look Back’ and she was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger in 2005 for ‘Calling Out For You’.