Aschehoug 's Debutant Prize to Sandra Kolstad

January 21 2022
Musician, composer, singer and author Sandra Kolstad’s Two Words for Destruction is awarded the Aschehoug Debutant Prize 2021

The publisher characterizes Two Words for Destruction as "a fiction debut written with literary self-assurance and poetic sensuality – about a destructive and shattering love between two women …

In many ways, the novel can be said to be written in the tragic romance genre: an arduous love story with an unhappy ending. The novel has both lightness and gravitas, and alternates between delusion and insight – the writing is intimate, sensual, and musical. It is about the ecstasy of devoting oneself to another human being and allowing them to provide structure for existence. It is about the challenges of defining one’s own boundaries and losing sight of where one ends and the other begins.

What happens when a person vanishes into the will of another, relinquishing all control, only to be abandoned? What are you left with then? Love’s brutality and the balance between dependency and the compulsion for freedom are the refrain of this beautiful, intense fiction debut"

A beautiful, sensitive and wise novel it is, congratulations! Photo: Kine Kolstad

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