Repetition: A Novel

Synopsis

One dark November evening in Norway, a novelist in her sixties attends the opera and finds herself seated beside a teenage girl. A fleeting moment of tension between the girl and her parents awakens memories of her own sixteenth year, a time marked by first love, first intoxication, and the uneasy transition from childhood to adulthood. As she reflects on that formative period, she revisits a family bound together by silence, an anxious mother, a distant father, and a decision that would quietly shape all of their lives.

Spare, elegant, and emotionally resonant, The Age of Innocence is a luminous meditation on memory, family, and the hidden sacrifices that echo across generations. With remarkable psychological precision, Vigdis Hjorth explores adolescence, parental expectations, and the enduring power of the past to illuminate the present.

About the Author

Vigdis Hjorth is one of Norway's most celebrated contemporary novelists, internationally acclaimed for her psychologically incisive fiction exploring memory, family, identity, and truth. Her novels, including Will and Testament, Is Mother Dead, and Long Live the Post Horn!, have been translated into more than thirty languages. The Age of Innocence is translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund.

Publisher
Verso Fiction

Publication Date
September 9, 2025

Format
Paperback

Pages
184

Subjects
Literary Fiction · Translated Fiction · Norwegian Literature · Contemporary Fiction

ISBN
9781804298947