Inger Bråtveit

The Art of Swimming

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The Art of Swimming is a book about what it means to be a daughter, mother, step-mother, spouse, and sister.

It is about birth and death, what it takes to keep writing and living, and the ways in which truth and lies are worked out under different conditions. It deals with our connectivity and how the life of a single individual is bound to a larger community and political structures.

With The Art of Swimming, Inger Bråtveit has crafted a hybrid novel in which personal incidents, essayistic reflections, documentary materials and invention are mingled in new and often surprising ways. The acute narrative touches on our basic human condition, both existentially and ethically.

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“This is world literature. Today, I’ve read the strongest, finest, wisest, most beautiful novel in years.”

Author Hanne Ørstavik

“Inger Bråtveit opens a gleaming window on literature and life.”

Stavanger Aftenblad
Bråtveit, inger photo pernille marie walvik
Photo: Pernille Marie Waldvik

Inger Bråtveit (b. 1978) is one of our most exciting younger authors. She made her debut as an author in 2002 with the novel Mouth towards a Frozen Fjord. Her second novel, Siss and Unn, was nominated for the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature in 2008. After a poetry collaboration with notable Swedish author Cecilia Hansson, The Love Project, Bråtveit published her third novel Alice A4 in 2015. The novel was nominated for the Young Readers’ Critics’ Prize.
Bråtveit has been awarded several literary prizes, including the New Norwegian Literature Prize and the Bjørnson Scholarship.