Edy Poppy - Selected Title Author
We are happy to present our selected title author Edy Poppy. She has written Iggy (original title: Iggy). The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the spring 2024.
What is your book about?
Edy, age 20: She marries a Frenchman and enters into a pact of mutual unfaithfulness. They travel to the south of France to live their artist dream. But then she becomes pregnant, and the idea of a child is impossible. The abortion becomes a part of their artist life.
Edy, age 30: She makes her literary debut and finds herself a 21-years-old lover. He wants to have a child, she hesitates. After a few years, the relationship breaks down and she is alone.
Edy, age 42: She has a small boy aged two and a girl growing in her belly. She is together with a German performance artist, and life is supposed to be an art piece, but this idea is threatened by trivialities.
What inspired you to write this book?
I started writing Iggy when I was thirty-seven – single for the first time since I was seventeen, not to mention childless. In my twenties, I’d chosen to forgo my child “Iggy”, opting for an abortion to pursue art and a life of adventure. I dreamt of living as far as possible from my upbringing in rural Bø in Telemark. I never regretted having the abortion, but the decision was irreversible – and fateful. Was the pregnancy all those years ago my only chance of becoming a mother? The questions raced through my mind, and I wanted to explore this further. When I started writing Iggy, I had no idea how the novel would end up; I had to wait for life to happen, to guide me. If I know the answer beforehand, my writing is dead, lifeless. It’s in the exploration and the unknown that my language comes alive and finds its shape. That my life turns into fiction.
Who is this book for?
Anyone who enjoys art and who’s interested in an unconventional life.
What sets your book apart from others in the same genre/theme?
Like many before me and beside me, what I write is closely connected to my own life. However, I believe there’s something about both my life experiences and my perspective on those experiences that sets me apart from a large part of contemporary literature. My life has largely been lived within various artistic subcultures across Europe, in close dialogue with European literature and art. This, combined with my background growing up in rural Norway, makes Iggy different from other books being published today.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
Read more about the author here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the spring 2024 here
