The Art of Swimming

Inger Bråtveit

Original title: Dette er også vatn
Publisher: Forlaget Oktober, 2018
Pages: 162 pages

The Art of Swimming is a book about what it means to be a daughter, mother, step-mother, spouse, and sister.

It is about birth and death, what it takes to keep writing and living, and the ways in which truth and lies are worked out under different conditions. It deals with our connectivity and how the life of a single individual is bound to a larger community and political structures.

With The Art of Swimming, Inger Bråtveit has crafted a hybrid novel in which personal incidents, essayistic reflections, documentary materials and invention are mingled in new and often surprising ways. The acute narrative touches on our basic human condition, both existentially and ethically.

Foreign rights

Arabic: Sefsafa Publishing House, Egypt
German: btb Verlag
Dutch: excerpt from the novel in “Terras”

“This is world literature. Today, I’ve read the strongest, finest, wisest, most beautiful novel in years."

Hanne Ørstavik, Norwegian author

“Inger Bråtveit opens a gleaming window on literature and life.”

Jan Askelund, Stavanger Aftenblad

Inger Bråtveit

Photo: Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard

Inger Bråtveit is one of Norway’s most exciting younger authors and the recipient of several awards and grants, including the New Norwegian Literature Prize and the Bjørnson Scholarship. She debuted as an author in 2002 with the novel Mouth Towards a Frozen Fjord. Her second novel, Siss and Unn, was nominated for the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature in 2008.
Bråtveit published her third novel Alice A4 in 2015, nominated for the Young Readers’ Critics’ Prize. The Art of Swimming (2018) is a hybrid novel applauded for its wise and beautiful prose. Starweed is her fifth novel.