National Book Award for Translated Literature
The Helios Disaster
A short novel that recasts the myth of Athena in contemporary Sweden. Anna, a twelve-year-old girl, is born from the head of her father Conrad; he is taken to a psychiatric hospital, while she is sent to a foster family. Faith, language, loneliness, and longing for her father converge as the book portrays a girl slipping away from ordinary reality through a mythic premise and sharply focused psychological writing.
Work Information
The loneliness of a girl born as myth reverberates painfully through the landscape of modern family life and psychiatric care.
Anna emerges fully formed from her father's head and is drawn into human life in a village in northern Sweden. Through a foster home, a Pentecostal church, and a psychiatric ward, her longing for her father and her question of who she is grow more urgent. The book is a mythic retelling, but also a compressed psychological novel about mental illness, separation from family, and loneliness that cannot easily be spoken.
Review Summaries
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Critics value the way the novel layers loneliness and loss onto a mythic frame while rendering the girl's troubled inner life with intensity. The response emphasizes portraiture over tidy resolution, reading the book as the image of a young goddess stranded on earth.
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Reviewers respond to the spare, controlled prose, which brings mental crisis and family fragility into view without easy sentiment. Because myth and psychological realism are tightly interwoven, the brief novel leaves a heavy afterimage.
Book Information
- Publisher
- World Editions
- Published
- 2020-04-07
- Pages
- 128 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.7 x 1.27 x 20.32 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781642860689
- ISBN-10
- 1642860689
- Price
- 3141 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Mystery & Thrillers/Thrillers/Psychological & Suspense
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE "Knausgård is an impressive writer" ― Publishers Weekly "Knausgård’s writing is crystalline and careful" ― Kirkus Reviews "Boström Knausgård’s careful exploration of mental illness is restrained and entirely unsentimental. (...) Her prose is unobtrusive in its simplicity and minimalism. The result is both powerful and lyrical." ― Words Without Borders This modern spin on the myth of Athena plunges us deep inside the mind of an unlikely twelve-year-old goddess confined to a small Swedish town. Separated from her father just moments after bursting from his skull in full armor, Anna is packed off into foster care where she learns to ski, speaks in tongues, and negotiates the needs of a quirky cast of relatives. Unable to overcome her father’s absence, however, she finally succumbs to depression and is institutionalized. Anna’s rallying war cry rings out across the pages of this concise and piercing novel as a passionate appeal for belonging taken to its emotional extreme.
LINDA BOSTRÖM KNAUSGÅRD is a Swedish author and poet, as well as a producer of documentaries for national radio. Her first novel, The Helios Disaster , was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the United States. Welcome to America , her second novel, was nominated for the prestigious Swedish August Prize and the Svenska Dagbladet Literary Prize in her home country, and was also longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and the National Translation Award in the United States. October Child became a bestseller in Sweden and throughout Scandinavia, where it was published to great critical acclaim. RACHEL WILLSON-BROYLES is a freelance translator based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She received her BA in Scandinavian Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2002 and her PhD in Scandinavian Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013. Other authors whose works she has translated include Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Jonas Jonasson, Malin Persson Giolito, and Linda Boström Knausgård.
Reviews
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Packs lyricism, plus an intense sense of place, plus characters who feel alive, together with insights on mental health, along with a young woman coming of age and a pinch of Greek mythology into a short, highly engaging story. It is readable in 2 afternoons at the beach or 2 evenings sitting by a fire during. You will feel richer for the time spent and the journey taken.
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A very short well written book that I found the characters well fleshed out but not enough that I really cared enough. Most likely because there is little pages to really learn very much about them.