Zusatztext "A piercing story of a girl who responds to trauma by mustering the most powerful weapon available to her: silence. (...) melodic, mythological, transformative, a testament to literature's powers..." Vanity Fair a taut portrait of how difficult it can be to reconcile ideals about faith and family with their messier realities. An intense, recursive book that evokes the chill despair of a Bergman film. Kirkus Reviews "The narrative is borderline stream-of-consciousness, with hallucinations mingling with reality, forcing readers to constantly question what they are told. Knausgård is an impressive writer, and she has created a unique, powerful lead in a world all her own." Publishers Weekly "In striking prose, Knausgård examines the power of silence and the complicated reality of family. A singular and thought-provoking story with a child narrator you won't soon forget. I look forward to Knausgård's next book!" Bookriot " Welcome to America is a slim, beautiful act of grace, a novel that moves easily through the shadows and patches of light within its characters, through truths half-glimpsed and barely acknowledged. It will remind readers of the intimate force of Ingmar Bergman's films, secrets and lies in close focus, haunting and desperately true. Robert J Wiersema for The Toronto Star "Sparse, sleek and exacting...[Boström Knausgård] provides a haunting and evocative portrait of the process of trauma and the awareness of personal isolationism, even within the structures of faith and family." Alice Martin for Shelf Awareness "Boström Knausgård's careful exploration of mental illness is restrained and entirely unsentimental. She passes no judgment on her characters, whose pain she reveals through Ellen's musings. Her prose is unobtrusive in its simplicity and minimalism. The result is both powerful and lyrical, qualities beautifully rendered by translator Martin Aitken's concise, pared-down English text." Deborah Bragan-Turner for Words Without Borders "Knausgård's novel...gives voice to the uncontrollable, horrifying aspects of growing up. Ellen doesn't quite understand why her life force might be so compromised, but she does find power, pride, and a kind of freedom in her silence. Readers familiar with Karl Ove Knausgaard's autobiographical My Struggle series will recognize Linda Boström as its author's ex-wife, adding further intrigue to this quietly bold tale of familial terror and love." Annie Bostrom, Booklist "Knausgård's story of a family in crisis is shocking and imaginative. Everything is written in beautiful and sparse prose which suggests that, after all, from darkness comes light." Jury, August Prize "Knausgård's artistry is masterful." Bookslut With each sentence of her novella, Knausgaard gives a spare and poetic accounting of her narrator's silent daysTogether, they mark something quite lovely. Catherine Holmes, The Charleston Post and Courier " Welcome to America presents itself as an étude in the musical sense of the term: a basic theme that varies to infinity, acquiring with each new variation a new unprecedented facet. A triumph." Le Monde "The incandescent Welcome to America allows one to discover the author's vibrant and powerful universe." Lire "Gets you in the gut. A delirious dance." L'Alsace Quotidien "A tender novel about a mute girl: gentle, sensitive, minimal, concise, subtle, and brutal. This is writing as self-defense and liberation." Volker Weidermann for Spiegel "A daring and disturbing novel. One will not soon forget the eleven-year-old narrator and her silence." MDR Kultur "In her slim book, Boström Knausgård conjures a constel...

Vorwort
• Lead title with AFP of 10,000 copies • 1,000 advance reader copies and IndieBound White Box mailing • 5-city author tours in Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 upon publication of Helios Disaster • Exclusive short story and excerpt placement • National TV, radio, print, and online review campaign • Book club discussion guide • Book store co-op available • Giveaways: Goodreads

Autorentext

LINDA BOSTRÖM KNAUSGÅRD is a Swedish author and poet, as well as a producer of documentaries for national radio. Her first novel, The Helios Disaster, was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the United States. Welcome to America, her second novel, was nominated for the prestigious Swedish August Prize and the Svenska Dagbladet Literary Prize in her home country, and was also longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and the National Translation Award in the United States. October Child became a bestseller in Sweden and throughout Scandinavia, where it was published to great critical acclaim.

MARTIN AITKEN is a full-time translator of Scandinavian literature based in the Zealand region of Denmark. Working mainly from Danish and more recently Norwegian, he has translated the works of writers such as Kim Leine, Helle Helle, Peter Høeg, and Karl Ove Knausgaard. His translation of Hanne Ørstavik's Love was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award.

Klappentext
A family on the brink of silence Ellen has stopped talking. She thinks she may have killed her dad. Her brother's barricaded himself in his room. Their mother, a successful actress, carries on as normal. We're a family of light! she insists. But darkness seeps in everywhere and in their separate worlds each of them longs for togetherness. Welcome to America is an exquisite portrait of a sensitive, strong-willed child and a young mind in the throes of trauma, a family on the brink of implosion, and the love that threatens to tear them apart. 'Linda Boström Knausgård's story of a family in crisis is shocking and imaginative. Everything is written in beautiful and sparse prose which suggests that, after all, from darkness comes light.' JURY, AUGUST PRIZE 'Gentle, sensitive, minimal, concise, and very subtle' SPIEGEL 'Outstanding psychological chamber play' POLITIKEN

Leseprobe
It's a long time already since I stopped talking. They're used to it now. My mum, my brother. My dad's dead, so I don't know what he'd have to say about it. Maybe that it was genetic. The genes come down hard in our family. Hard and without mercy. The direct lines of descendancy. Maybe the silence was always inside me. I used to say things that weren't true. I said the sun was out when it was raining. That the porridge we ate was green like the grass and tasted like soil. I said school was like walking into pitch darkness every day. Like having to hold on to a handrail until it was time to go home. What did I do when school was over? I certainly didn't play with my brother, he locked himself away in his room with his music. He nailed the door shut. He pissed in bottles he kept. It was what they were for. The silence makes no difference. You mustn't believe otherwise. You mustn't believe the sun will rise in the morning, because you can't ever be sure it will. I haven't used the notebook my mum gave me. In case there's something you want to communicate, she said. The notebook was a kind of consent. She was accepting my silence. Leaving me alone. At some point it would cease. Most likely it would cease. I passed my hand over the window sill and drew outlines in the dust that stuck to my palm. A spruce tree and a Father Christmas. It was all I could think of. Thoughts come so slowly and express themselves so simply: pellets, bread slice, pond. Did I say we lived in an apartment? There was no contact with nature, apart from the park where I saw my first flasher. I was sitting on top of the climbing frame and the man stood below and exposed himself completely. He took off his pants altogether. His thing was stiff and purple. I stared and noted the colour. I had friends, but they don't come round anymore. They found other apartments to visit once the silence began. Before that, there were always kids at ours. My mum was bonkers. At ours you …