Most Popular Books by Siri Hustvedt

From the author of "The Enchantment of Lily Dahl" comes a powerful and heartbreaking novel that chronicles the epic story of two families, two sons, and two marriages.

"And who among us would deny Jane Austen her happy endings or insist that Cary Grant and Irene Dunne should get back together at the end of The Awful Truth? There are tragedies and there are comedies, aren''t there? And they are often more the same than different, rather like men and women, if you ask me. A comedy depends on stopping the story at exactly the right moment." Mia Fredrickson, the wry, vituperative, tragic comic, poet narrator of The Summer Without Men, has been forced to reexamine her own life. One day, out of the blue, after thirty years of marriage, Mia''s husband, a renowned neuroscientist, asks her for a "pause." This abrupt request sends her reeling and lands her in a psychiatric ward. The June following Mia''s release from the hospital, she returns to the prairie town of her childhood, where her mother lives in an old people''s home. Alone in a rented house, she rages and fumes and bemoans her sorry fate. Slowly, however, she is drawn into the lives of those around her—her mother and her close friends,"the Five Swans," and her young neighbor with two small children and a loud angry husband—and the adolescent girls in her poetry workshop whose scheming and petty cruelty carry a threat all their own. From the internationally bestselling author of What I Loved comes Siri Hustvedt''s provocative, witty, and revelatory novel about women and girls, love and marriage, and the age-old question of sameness and difference between the sexes.

"Returning to New York from Minnesota, the grieving siblings continue to pursue the mystery behind the note. While Erik''s fascination with his new tenants and emotional vulnerability to his psychiatric patients threaten to overwhelm him, Inga is confronted by a hostile journalist who seems to know a secret connected to her dead husband, a famous novelist. As each new mystery unfolds, Erik begins to inhabit his emotionally hidden father''s history and to glimpse how his impoverished childhood, the Depression, and the war shaped his relationship with his children, while Inga must confront the reality of her husband''s double life."--BOOK JACKET.

Includes study guide and interview with the author.

A provocative, exuberant novel about time, memory, desire, and the imagination from the internationally bestselling and prizewinning author of The Blazing World. A young woman, S.H., moves to New York City in 1978 to look for adventure and write her first novel, but finds herself distracted by her mysterious neighbor, Lucy Brite. As S.H. listens to Lucy through the thin walls of her dilapidated building, she carefully transcribes the woman’s bizarre monologues about her daughter’s violent death and her need to punish the killer. Forty years later, S.H. stumbles upon the journal she kept that year and writes a memoir, Memories of the Future, in which she juxtaposes the notebook’s texts, drafts from her unfinished comic novel, and her commentaries on them to create a dialogue among selves over the decades. She remembers. She misremembers. She forgets. Events of the past take on new meanings. She works to reframe her traumatic memory of a sexual assault. She celebrates the legacy of the wild and rebellious Dada artist-poet, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. As the book unfolds, you witness S.H. write her way through vengeance and into freedom. Smart, funny, angry, and poignant, Hustvedt’s seventh novel brings together the themes that have made her one of the most celebrated novelists working today: the strangeness of time, the brutality of patriarchy, and the power of the imagination to remake the past.

From the author of The Blazing World, “a work of dizzying intensity…eloquent and vivid” (Don DeLillo), about a young Midwestern woman who finds herself entangled in intense circumstances—physical, cerebral, and existential—when she moves to New York City. Iris Vegan, a young, impoverished graduate student from the Midwest, finds herself entangled with four powerful but threatening characters as she tries to adjust to life in New York City. Mr. Morning, an inscrutable urban recluse, employs Iris to tape-record verbal descriptions of objects that belonged to a murder victim. George, a photographer, takes an eerie portrait of Iris, which then acquires a strong life of its own, appearing and disappearing without warning around the city. After a series of blinding migraines, Iris ends up in a hospital room with Mrs. O., a woman who has lost her mind and memory to a stroke, but who nevertheless retains both the strength and energy to torment her fellow patient. And finally, there is Professor Rose, Iris’s teacher and eventually her lover. While working with him on the translation of a German novella called The Brutal Boy, she discovers in its protagonist, Klaus, a vehicle for her own transformation and ventures out into the city again—this time dressed as a man.

Essays that explore what it means to be a human being draw upon the author''s personal experiences; thoughts on memory, emotion, and the imagination; and the visual arts.

From the author of the international bestseller What I Loved, a provocative collection of autobiographical and critical essays about writing and writers. Whether her subject is growing up in Minnesota, cross-dressing, or the novel, Hustvedt''s nonfiction, like her fiction, defies easy categorization, elegantly combining intellect, emotion, wit, and passion. With a light touch and consummate clarity, she undresses the cultural prejudices that veil both literature and life and explores the multiple personalities that inevitably inhabit a writer''s mind. Is it possible for a woman in the twentieth century to endorse the corset, and at the same time approach with authority what it is like to be a man? Hustvedt does. Writing with rigorous honesty about her own divided self, and how this has shaped her as a writer, she also approaches the works of others--Fitzgerald, Dickens, and Henry James--with revelatory insight, and a practitioner''s understanding of their art.

In a small Minnesota town, a tale of love and intrigue whose protagonist is Lily Dahl, a young actress. The cafe where she works is a meeting place for eccentrics and a New York artist who has come to paint them, with whom Lily has an affair. But one customer is a murderer and Lily turns sleuth.

The author delves into the mysteries of her own neurological condition in a far-ranging memoir that is “graceful, intense, and curiously affirming” (Booklist). While speaking at a memorial event for her father in 2006, novelist Siri Hustvedt suffered a violent seizure from the neck down. Despite her flapping arms and shaking legs, she continued to speak clearly and was able to finish her speech. It was as if she had suddenly become two people: a calm orator and a shuddering wreck. Then the seizures happened again and again. The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves tracks Hustvedt’s search for a diagnosis, one that takes her inside the thought processes of several scientific disciplines, each one of which offers a distinct perspective on her paroxysms but no ready solution. In the process, she finds herself entangled in fundamental questions: What is the relationship between brain and mind? How do we remember? What is the self? In The Shaking Woman, Hustvedt synthesizes her experience and research into a compelling mystery: Who is the shaking woman? In the end, the story she tells becomes, in the words of George Makari, author of Revolution in Mind, “a brilliant illumination for us all.”

A compelling, radical, “richly explored” (The New York Times Book Review), and “insightful” (Vanity Fair) collection of essays on art, feminism, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy from prize-winning novelist Siri Hustvedt, the acclaimed author of The Blazing World and What I Loved. In a trilogy of works brought together in a single volume, Siri Hustvedt demonstrates the striking range and depth of her knowledge in both the humanities and the sciences. Armed with passionate curiosity, a sense of humor, and insights from many disciplines she repeatedly upends received ideas and cultural truisms. “A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women” (which provided the title of this book) examines particular artworks but also human perception itself, including the biases that influence how we judge art, literature, and the world. Picasso, de Kooning, Louise Bourgeois, Anselm Kiefer, Susan Sontag, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Karl Ove Knausgaard all come under Hustvedt’s intense scrutiny. “The Delusions of Certainty” exposes how the age-old, unresolved mind-body problem has shaped and often distorted and confused contemporary thought in neuroscience, psychiatry, genetics, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary psychology. “What Are We? Lectures on the Human Condition” includes a powerful reading of Kierkegaard, a trenchant analysis of suicide, and penetrating reflections on the mysteries of hysteria, synesthesia, memory and space, and the philosophical dilemmas of fiction. A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women is an “erudite” (Booklist), “wide-ranging, irreverent, and absorbing meditation on thinking, knowing, and being” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Meditaions on the complex relationship between art and the world.

In this essay collection in which feminist philosophy meets family memoir, the novelist and scholar moves effortlessly between stories of her mother, grandmother, and daughter to connect mothers to the broader meanings of maternity in a culture shaped by misogyny and fantasies of paternal authority.

“The Delusions of Certainty is a unique book by an extraordinary author. Siri Hustvedt is a notable novelist, art scholar, and a philosopher of science. In this memorable and immensely enjoyable volume, Hustvedt rises above the exhausted debate over the two cultures, to demonstrate not just the possibility but also the advantages of combining the approaches of the arts, humanities, and sciences to illuminate a key aspect of the human condition: the mind-body problem.” —Antonio Damasio, bestselling author of Descartes’ Error and Self Comes to Mind “Siri Hustvedt proves her membership in the highest rank of neuroscientists and philosophers who probe the nature of thought and the workings of consciousness. A novelist and a student of psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Hustvedt can ask questions others cannot ask about imagination, identity, epistemology, gendered power, and mortality. Her authoritative knowledge and her courage to challenge the status quo guide the reader to fresh epiphanies about what counts as human nature. The work is, in the end, a work of freedom.” —Rita Charon, Columbia University “The Delusions of Certainty is the best book on the mind-body problem I have ever read. Perhaps only a great novelist and essayist can address what neuroscientists and philosophers fail to question. Siri Hustvedt takes the reader on an inspiring journey into highly relevant and often unanswered questions about what it means to be human.” —Vittorio Gallese, University of Parma Prizewinning novelist, feminist, and scholar Siri Hustvedt turns her brilliant and critical eye toward the metaphysical issues of neuropsychology in this lauded, standalone volume. Originally published in her “canonical” (Publishers Weekly) and “absorbing” (Kirkus Reviews) collection A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, The Delusions of Certainty exposes how the age-old, unresolved mind-body problem has shaped—and often distorted and confused—contemporary thought in neuroscience, psychiatry, genetics, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary psychology.

In this book, Hustvedt gives us nine essays on the significance of particular works of art, replete with original insights and a few startling discoveries. In her essay on Giorgione''s The Tempest, a painting that has mystified art critics for hundreds of years, the author reinterprets the canvas as a work about art and voyeurism. While looking at The Third of May, she was astonished to discover that Goya had hidden his own self-portrait in a shadowy corner of his iconic masterwork. More than anything, the essays in this book display a true passion for art, from the still lifes of Jean-Baptiste Chardin and Giorgio Morandi to the contemporary works of Joan Mitchell and Gerhard Richter. Hustvedt captures perfectly the pleasure found in giving oneself up to the complexities and ambiguities of painting, discovering new subtleties and surprises the longer one takes the time to look.--Back cover.

''A startling novel of ferocious psychological acumen, which, to my mind, deserves a large, international readership... very much a book for our times'' Siri Hustvedt, from the introduction ''A literary giant in Sweden, Dagerman conjures a Strindbergian atmosphere of shadowy menace in his brief, intense novel, A Moth to a Flame... This moody, death-haunted novel is well worth reading'' Evening Standard In 1940s Stockholm, a young man named Bengt falls into deep, private turmoil with the unexpected death of his mother. As he struggles to cope with her loss, his despair slowly transforms to rage when he discovers that his father had a mistress. Bengt swears revenge on behalf of his mother''s memory, but he soon finds himself drawn into a fevered and forbidden affair with the very woman he set out to destroy . . . Written in a taut, restrained style, A Moth to a Flame is an intense exploration of heartache and fury, desperation and illicit passion. Set against a backdrop of the moody streets of Stockholm and the Hitchcockian shadows in the woods and waters of Sweden''s remote islands, this is a psychological masterpiece by one of Sweden''s greatest writers. ''Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion'' Graham Greene ''Dagerman can evoke such emotion in a single sentence'' Colm Tóibín ''There are some writers (Kafka and Lorca immediately spring to mind) who come to enjoy the status of saint; their lives and deaths constitute statements about existence and its proper priorities. A saint of this type is the Swedish writer Stig Dagerman'' Times Literary Supplement ''This searing tale of bereavement and loathing feels all too relevant today'' Guardian

A comprehensive look into the fascinating life and enduring legacy of Juan Muñoz and his enigmatic installations “Walking between these figures feels like an interruption; being a spectator is itself a performance. They seem to know more than we do, about the status of being an artwork and the place of the viewer. The joke, if there is one, is on us.” —The Guardian Muñoz’s revolutionary oeuvre evokes emotional narratives through sculpture, installation, drawing, writing, and sound. Situating viewers between his work and among one another, he creates an intimacy between art and its audience. Muñoz thought deeply about art history and, in particular, the tradition of Spanish painting. Before his untimely death at the age of forty-eight, he produced an extensive, powerfully evocative body of work that uniquely explores the narrative and philosophical possibilities of art. Published on the occasion of the exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, in 2022, this catalogue provides an expansive overview of Muñoz’s career from the 1980s onward. In an accompanying text, the art historian and curator Guillaume Kientz contextualizes Muñoz’s influences within the art-historical canon. The acclaimed writer Siri Hustvedt contributes a thoughtful response to the artist’s iconic Conversation Piece. In an imagined interview between Muñoz and himself, Maurizio Cattelan further propels the artist’s momentum and potential in the time before his death. Also featured is a never-before-published interview between Muñoz and the art historian Michael Brenson that took place in 2000.

La nova novel·la de Siri Hustvedt després de vuit anys. Una obra brillant, un relat feminista provocador, intrigant i molt enginyós. Siri Hustvedt es posa en la pell d''una escriptora ja gran que, esperonada per la trobada d''un quadern de notes antic, evoca els records del seu primer any a Nova York, el 1978, quan acabada d''arribar de Minnesota, sola i sense ni cinc, descobreix les múltiples possibilitats que li ofereix la ciutat. A més, les converses misterioses d''una veïna, la Lucy Brite, que la jove sent a través de la fina paret de l''apartament, l''intriguen. I com que cada cop són confessions més íntimes i sinistres s''obsedeix a descobrir la veritat de la dona que viu a la porta del costat. Construïda a partir de la reelaboració en el present del temps passat, Records del futur crea un diàleg entre dècades i s''expandeix en múltiples relats. A més de la misteriosa vida de la veïna, assistim sobretot al retrat d''una jove que troba el seu camí com a dona i com a escriptora, inscrita en un ambient elèctric, el Nova York de finals dels anys 70. Amb la col·laboració de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura.

Fotografisk billedværk.

Nova edició de la novel·la més coneguda de Siri Hustvedt. La novel·la més coneguda de Siri Hustvedt (Premi de Llibreters del Quebec, Premi Femina Étranger), arrenca a Nova York el 1975, quan l''historiador de l''art Leo Hertzberg descobreix un quadre extraordinari d''un autor desconegut en una galeria del Soho. Fascinat, compra l''obra i vol conèixer l''artista, Bill Wechsler. A partir d''aquest moment, els dos homes inicien una profunda amistat que els unirà tota la vida, a ells i a les seves famílies. Molts anys després en Leo recorda la seva vida: el seu matrimoni, el naixement del seu fill i el del seu amic i ens revela els foscos secrets que han tensat les relacions i els lligams familiars.

Dos mujeres, una ciudad, un misterio: una historia entre la realidad y la ficción, entre el thriller psicológico y la novela de formación. Una escritora consagrada que trabaja en sus memorias redescubre los viejos diarios de su primer año en Nueva York, a finales de la década de 1970. Recién salida de un pueblo de Minnesota, sin apenas dinero y con hambre de nuevas experiencias, se deslumbra por todo lo que le ofrece la ciudad: su primer amor, los esbozos de su primera novela, la escena literaria que se abre ante ella, y, sobre todo, la obsesión por su vecina, una mujer joven que cada noche entona extraños monólogos en su apartamento y que la protagonista anota febrilmente en sus cuadernos. Conforme estas confesiones se vuelven más perturbadoras, su interés por descubrir la verdad detrás de la puerta de al lado también se intensifica. Cuarenta años después de aquello, esas notas y diarios sirven a la escritora para reflexionar sobre temas como el paso del tiempo, el deseo o el papel de la mujer en la sociedad, y para constatar que son los recuerdos del pasado los que en gran medida conforman quienes seremos en el futuro. Entre la metaliteratura y el feminismo, entre el thriller psicológico y el bildungsroman, Siri Hustvedt vuelve a cuestionar nuestras relaciones con la realidad, la capacidad del arte para cambiar nuestra percepción del mundo, los límites de la ficción y los enigmas de la personalidad y la memoria.

Una inquietante y perturbadora novela sobre los misterios de la identidad. Iris Vegan, una estudiante de literatura de la Universidad de Columbia, relata sus inquietantes encuentros con personajes neoyorquinos que el azar y la coincidencia han puesto en su camino. La relación de estos singulares momentos, en los que las fuerzas oscuras pueden cambiar el curso de una vida, permite al lector abordar esta obra como la suma de cuatro episodios independientes pero complementarios a la vez.

La Harriet Burden va ser una figura enigmàtica de l’art novaiorquès dels vuitanta i ara, al cap d’uns anys de la seva mort, és objecte d’una investigació acadèmica. Una indagació detectivesca, perquè la personalitat de la Harriet és polièdrica i desconcertant. Esposa del marxant Felix Lord, mare de dos fills, amfitriona del més granat del món cultural i mecenes, la Harriet va ser, sobretot, una artista ignorada per la seva condició de dona en un entorn marcat per un masclisme latent. I, per denunciar-ho, va posar en marxa un experiment transgressor amb l’exposició de la seva obra a través de tres homes que li serviran de màscara: l’Anton Tish, en Phineas Q. Eldridge i en Rune. Però en aquest joc arriscat els egos, els anhels i les pulsions sexuals desencadenaran unes tempestes incontrolables i desembocaran en una mort ritual i pertorbadora. El resultat és un exercici brillantíssim, una narració polifònica que, a partir dels diaris de la Harriet, testimonis i crítiques i articles de l’època, reconstrueix la personalitat i la proposta estètica d’aquesta dona, el seu joc de falses identitats per descobrir les mesquineses dels qui mouen els fils del mercat de l’art. Siri Hustvedt ens regala una novel•la prodigiosa sobre el paper de la dona com a creadora, però també una reflexió sagaç sobre la identitat, l’ambició, el desig i l’engany. «Una d’aquestes novel•les en què un autor consagrat resumeix triomfalment la seva trajectòria i potser fins i tot supera el que ha fet abans» (James Walton, The Spectator). «Construïda com un d’aquells mecanismes narratius nabokovians... L’heroïna és com els herois de Philip Roth o de Saul Bellow» (Fernanda Eberstadt, The New York Review of Books). «Plena d’emocions i de saviesa» (Arifa Akbar, The Independent).

PREMIO PRINCESA DE ASTURIAS DE LAS LETRASEl libro más personal de Siri Hustvedt, unas memorias únicas con las que la autora intenta conocer el misterio detrás de su propia enfermedad. En 2006, mientras hablaba en público en un homenaje dedicado a su padre, Siri Hustvedt comenzó a temblar descontroladamente de la cabeza a los pies. «Mis brazos se agitaban de forma desmedida. Mis rodillas chocaban una contra otra. Temblaba como si fuera presa de un ataque epiléptico. Lo increíble era que no me afectaba la voz en absoluto. Hablaba como si siguiera impertérrita», escribió. Era como si de repente se hubiera convertido en dos personas y no fuera capaz de reconocerse en esa parte de ella que parecía enferma. Cautivada por aquel episodio, decidió ir a la búsqueda de la mujer temblorosa. En estas memorias, Siri Hustvedt trata de encontrar un diagnóstico que resuelva aquella misteriosa transformación. Ahondando en la historia de la medicina y en su propia biografía, y profundizando en disciplinas como la neurología, la psiquiatría y el psicoanálisis, firma un libro único en el que, en la tradición de autores como Oliver Sacks, la ciencia y la literatura caminan de la mano con el objetivo de iluminar aquello que no conocemos de nosotros mismos. « La mujer temblorosa es producto de una lectora voraz y de un pensamiento profundo, y es imposible no apreciar la lucidez en cada frase» (The Observer). «Un libro inteligente, culto y apasionante» (ABC). «Un audaz experimento que resultará útil a muchos» (Marie Claire).

Konstnärinnan Harriet Burden känner uppgivenhet inför att ständigt förbises av New Yorks konstnärselit. Då bestämmer hon sig för att genomföra ett experiment: hon döljer sin identitet bakom tre påhittade manliga konstnärsalias. Men när hon till sist träder fram får hon inte den reaktion hon förväntat sig. Siri Hustvedts nya roman kan beskrivas som en intellektuell deckare i konstvärlden. I centrum står en avliden, sedan länge bortglömd konstnärinna, vars verk plötsligt uppmärksammas på nytt - inte minst tack vare hennes unika synsätt på identitet, kön, femininitet, konstnärlig makt. Jakten på henne går via anteckningar, dagböcker, artiklar, spridda minnesbilder av barn, älskare, vänner. Fram träder en kvinna som under sitt liv bar flera motstridiga masker och vars psykologiska dubbelspel också fick tragiska konsekvenser.

Si ets una poetessa sense gaire èxit i has passat la ratlla dels cinquanta, t''agafa un atac de nervis i et tanquen en un manicomi. I, quan et deixen anar, te''n vas al poble de la mare, i passes un estiu amb les seves amigues de la residència, i imparteixes un curs de poesia a un grup de petites bruixes adolescents. I et poses a mantenir correspondència amb un boig que t''envia missatges anònims... Plantejada en clau de comèdia sempre amb un peu en la tragèdia, L''estiu sense homes és una intel·ligent novel·la sobre la guerra dels sexes, la solitud, l''amor, la utilitat de la poesia i la possibilitat de canviar.

Eine junge Frau bezieht ein winziges Zimmerchen im heruntergekommenen Morningside Heights. Das Jahr ist 1979, und S.H. kommt direkt aus der amerikanischen Provinz; daher ihr Spitzname: "Minnesota". Das wilde New York lockt, und sie, die Schriftstellerin werden will, genießt den Schmutz wie den Glanz, das turbulente Leben wie die Einsamkeit. Alles Neue saugt sie begierig in sich auf. So auch, durch die papierdünnen Wände zur Nachbarwohnung, die oft skurrilen Monologe und gesungenen Mantras ihrer Nachbarin: Lucy Brite, liest sie auf dem Klingelschild. Doch mit der Zeit wünscht sie, sie hätte nicht so genau hingehört. Immer dringlicher werden Lucys Gesänge, immer klagender. Von Misshandlung ist die Rede, von Gefangenschaft, von Kindstod, ja von Mord. Nach und nach wird die Nachbarin zu einer immer schrecklicheren Obsession. Bis eines Nachts ein dramatisches Ereignis in Minnesotas Wohnung Lucy Brite in Person auf den Plan ruft - und nun beginnt ein Geheimnis sich zu lüften... Vierzig Jahre später erzählt die gealterte S.H., inzwischen eine anerkannte Schriftstellerin und Wissenschaftlerin, was davor und danach geschah: erzählt von Frauensolidarität und Männerwahn, von Liebe und Geschlechterkampf, von Gewalt und Versöhnung. Erzählt aber auch vom Mysterium der Zeit, von Erinnerung und Phantasie, von der Art und Weise, wie alles im Leben zu Geschichten wird, erzählt vom Erzählen. Und das mit einer unbändigen Lust daran, die uns wünschen lässt, das Buch wäre nie zu Ende.

Incapable de supporter plus longtemps la liaison que son mari entretient avec une femme plus jeune qu''elle, Mia quitte brusquement New York pour se rendre dans le Minnesota et se réfugier quelque temps auprès de sa mère octogénaire. Parcours d''une femme blessée en forme de "lecture de soi" et d''inattendue épiphanie personnelle, ce roman solaire – féministe au meilleur sens du terme – irradie d''une énergie aussi rebelle que stimulante.

Després de l''èxit de la seva anterior novel·la, finalista del Premi Llibreter, ens arriba l''esplèndida Elegia per un americà, de l''escriptora nord-americana Siri Hustvedt. Reprenent l''angoixa soterrada de les seves obres anteriors, l''autora explora els secrets que marquen les vides d''Erik Davidsen i la seva germana Inga. Tot just després de la mort del seu pare, a través dels diaris que va escriure, els dos germans van descobrint històries que ell havia mantingut amagades en vida. Alhora, ambdós s''embranquen en processos personals dins les seves pròpies vides: Inga descobreix les infidelitats del seu marit mort i Erik s''enamora perdudament de la seva nova veïna, una noia amb una filla de cinc anys que amaga, ella també, un secret terrible que posarà en perill la vida de tots tres.

Per primera vegada en català, la novel·la amb què es va donar a conèixer Siri Hustvedt. Publicada l''any 1992 en anglès, The Blindfold, la primera novel·la de Siri Hustvedt relata quatre trobades inquietants d''una estudiant de literatura de la Universitat de Columbia, Iris Vegan, amb diversos personatges novaiorquesos que l''atzar ha posat en el seu camí. Quatre episodis en què Siri Hustvedt reflexiona sobre els misteris de la identitat, sobre la irracionalitat i el perill que comporten les relacions.

Die New Yorker Dichterin Mia und der Neurowissenschaftler Boris haben eine Ehekrise. Boris möchte eine «Pause». Mia stellt fest, dass die Pause viel jünger als sie und überdies Boris'' Laborassistentin ist. Nach einer klinischen Depression braucht sie eine Pause, fährt allein in ihre Geburtsstadt in Minnesota und verbringt den Sommer in der Nähe ihrer Mutter, die, mit neunzig noch ziemlich munter, im Heim lebt. Ansonsten brütet Mia über den untreuen Boris und die Männer im Allgemeinen. Mit Wut im Bauch und dem Herzen auf der Zunge notiert sie zum Thema Liebe, Ehe und Sex, was ihr einfällt. Und das ist, neben Gedichten und einem erotischen Tagebuch, eine Menge! Die Kur schlägt an, und siehe da, langsam entdeckt sie sich und das Leben neu. Was für ein Genuss, was für eine Befreiung! Selbst Boris merkt das in der Ferne und schickt zerknirschte Mails. Siri Hustvedts neuer Roman ist ein hinreißendes, blitzgescheites Buch über das Leben von Frauen heute. Von der Geburt über den Sexus bis zum Tod, die scharfzüngige Mia nimmt kein Blatt vor den Mund. So erfrischend, so komisch kann Beziehungsanalyse sein – und das ganz ohne Männer!

Dialogue à plusieurs niveaux de narration entre une jeune femme en quête de sa vocation à New York à la fin des années 70 et l''écrivaine chevronnée qu''elle est devenue quarante ans plus tard, ce “portrait de l''artiste en jeune femme”, septième roman de Siri Hustvedt, rassemble et magnifie les thèmes qui ont fait la renommée internationale de l''autrice : le temps comme étrangeté, la violence et la cruauté du patriarcat, la capacité de l''imaginaire à recréer le présent, voire à le guérir.