Grace

Kurzbeschreibung Johan has bargained with Death for years: when he was a boy, he prayed that Death take his father, not his mother; when he was a man, Death kindly removed his wife, Alice, allowing him to marry Mai, the love of his life. Now, Death has come for him, and Johan needs to strike one last bargain: when the moment arrives, he wants Mai to promise that she will help him on his way out of the world. Johan has been mainly a paragon of mediocrity; it is only through his love for Mai that he has seen the greater possibilities that life can sometimes offer. He is determined that his passing will be dignified, controlled - perhaps even comforting. But when the time comes, and Mai has finally agreed to help him, he is no longer sure even that he has asked the right question. His deathbed is not as he imagined. His life - as a husband, lover and father - was never what it could have been. And why is it exactly, he wonders, that his one true love has agreed to be his angel of death? Linn Ullmann's haunting novel portrays a passionate love affair and asks difficult questions about life, love and death. Finally, in prose of cool precision, deep insight and dark wit, it illustrates how the most ordinary of lives can, in the end, be unexpectedly touched by grace. 'Ullmann is a fine writer, complex, intelligent and scrupulous. The drama of private life, and of the here and now, continues to require voices such as hers' Daily Telegraph Werbetext A stunning novel about how the most banal of lives can be touched by grace in the most unexpected ways Buchrückseite Johan has bargained with Death for years. Now, Death has come for him, and Johan needs to strike one last bargain: when the moment arrives, he wants his wife Mai to promise that she will help him on his way out of the world. But, when the time comes, he is no longer sure that he has asked the right question. Why is it exactly that his one true love has agreed to be his angel of death? 'Extraordinarily fearless . . . This is a work of the most intricate and impressive artistry, with past and present, fantasy and stark actuality, emotion and the clinically physical, not so much juxtaposed as flowing in and out of each other . . . There is also, paradoxically, much humour . . . an exemplary account of an unremarkable but unique man's journey to the moment of death and beyond' Independent on Sunday 'Grace is, in a sense, about what happens in between, the major and minor events that occur over the course of any given day. Ullmann's triumph is that even when dealing with the weightiest of these, she has the lightest of touches' Time Out International acclaim for Grace: 'An elegant stylist with an original voice, Ullmann is especially good at capturing moments of poignancy, often with a trace of gallows humor . . . a delicate, haunting portrait of a fainthearted man trying his best to meet the ends of life - and love - with a modicum of dignity and, yes, grace' New York Times ‘A flawless novel’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany) ‘Linn Ullmann has composed a book of rare power, like a drama in three acts…the tenderness is terrible and the compassion merciless’ Lire (France) Über den Autor und weitere Mitwirkende Linn Ullmann is a graduate of New York University, where she studied English literature. She returned to her native Oslo in 1990, where she now lives with her husband and children and works as a journalist and literary critic.