ABOUT THE BOOK

With one blue eye and one brown, Idun Hov was never going to be as pretty as her perfect twin sister, Urd. She is clumsy too, whereas Urd is graceful and clever. Now calling herself Katherine Sand, to erase all memory of her father, Urd hosts a successful prime-time television show called Confession, while Idun is a patient in a mental asylum, her fame as an author far behind her. Alone in her hospital room, Idun begins to write again, summoning to mind each member of the Hov family in an attempt to plumb the depths of her illness and to solve the mystery of what really happened during the German occupation of Norway when she was a little girl.

Why, when her father was sentenced for treason after the war, did he offer no defence? Did he really deliver his own brother, a member of the Resistance, to the Gestapo? And what happened to the little Jewish boy, Aaron, who lived in her grandfather's attic and swore Idun to secrecy? Soon her family chronicle assumes a broader scope, mirroring the violent history of our century. Idun's near-Proustian search for lost time is a psychological tour de force, whereby she gradually unlocks a past to which she alone has the key.

Bergljot Hobøk Haff was born in Norway in 1925. On completing her education she travelled to Denmark, where she remained for the next 24 years. She now lives in Oslo. Her first novel, Raset (The Landslide), was published in 1956 and attracted considerable attention. In succeeding books she has tackled original and unusual themes which she approaches in an unorthodox and highly personal fashion. One of Norway's most respected novelists, she was awarded a Special Prize by the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature in 1988. Her 1962 novel Bålet (The Bonfire) won the Association of Norwegian Literary Critic's Prize and Shame won the prestigious Norwegian Critic's Award in 1997.

Sverre Lyngstad is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is the author of many books and articles in the field of Scandinavian literature. His published translations from the Norwegian include Knut Faldbakken's Adam's Diary (1988), Sigurd Hoels' The Troll Circle (1992) and The Road to the World's End (1995), selected stories by Kjell Askildsen (1994), and Knut Hamsun's Rosa (1997), Hunger (1997) and Pan (1998).