The Last Photograph

Thorvald Steen

Original title: Det siste fotografiet
Publisher: Forlaget Oktober, 2019
Genre: Novel
Pages: 160 pages

The Last Photograph is a sharp family-thriller. The main character attempts to understand his mother’s silence; why did she lie to him all his life? His daughter is pregnant and carries the same genetic mutation as himself. Will new medical science be able to help? To find out, they need to know their family history better. Will the prospects of the granddaughter’s pregnancy educe his mother to replace years of shame with new insight, understanding, and reconciliation?

The Last Photograph is a freestanding sequel to The White Bathhouse, received with equal enthusiasm and acclaim as its predecessor. The novel raises acute issues concerning identity and disabilities, bridging personal history with the political and the individual psychological experience of living between the two spheres. Steen has written a poignant novel on life, mutual respect and dignity.

Foreign rights

English: Seagull Books
Hungarian: Polar
Swedish: Heidrun

A well-directed and beautifully composed piece of literature …It’s an impressively well-constructed work of literature delivered by Steen, and the female portraits are extraordinary. The Last Photograph must be among the best Thorvald Steen has written.”

Turid Larsen, Dagsavisen.

A powerful, autobiographical novel about being other, the shame that might trail a family through generations, and what it means to live with a hereditary illness… Steen has found a literary tone in his two latest novels that touch the readers heart profoundly.

Gabriel Vosgraff Moro, VG.

A magnificent novel about illness, shame and heritage… The half dozen novels since The Weight of Snow Crystals (2006) that have carried his Muscular dystrophy as their pivotal thematic point, are the heights of Steen’s writing… They form an outstanding body of literature in contemporary Norwegian fiction, and this year’s moving The Last Photograph – with its 1:1 relationship between narrator and writer – surpass them all.

Jan Askelund, Stavanger Aftenblad.

Thorvald Steen

Photo: Trine Hisdal

Thorvald Steen’s (b. 1954) literary career began in 1983, and he has since produced a diverse body of work spanning a variety of genres. Translated into 30 languages so far, Steen has received praise and prizes for the quality of his authorship in Norway and abroad.