Black Dog

“Everyone said my mother slipped on the rocks, hit her head, and drowned.

But I know that’s not what really happened. My mother followed a black dog out into the sea and disappeared.
That black dog was the devil, and my mother and the devil walked out into the sea, and then she was gone.
It was as simple as that."

The family lives on a small, desolate island at the farthest edge of the fjord. When the mother drowns under mysterious circumstances, the father, daughter, and son must go on alone. Life on the island is simple: there is the house and the sea, there are the sheep and the fish, and there is God’s grace in every kind of weather. The sea gives and the sea takes—and it’s been this way as long as the son can remember. But a new era is approaching: a factory is being built on the mainland, and soon there will be no use for the people living out on the islands.

Faith in God and faith in the future are at odds, as is the space nature itself takes in their lives. After all, what is the true value of a world at the edge of the sea, and what is the cost of a new, shared vision of the future?

In this concentrated yet expansive family chronicle, Frisch reinvents the classic Norwegian coastal tale for our time. Black Dog is a luminous novel about faith and future, about longing and resilience, and about what remains when life at the edge of the ocean finally comes to an end.

Coming out in September 2025