We’re delighted to invite you to join a conversation between Tess Lewis and Hanne Ørstavik, author of Ti Amo, as they discuss the novel and it’s translation into English by Martin Aitken. The event will take place in person at the Norwich Bookstore in Vermont on November 1st, at 7pm EST.

In Ti Amo, an unnamed narrator tends to her husband, stricken with cancer, in the final months of his life. She examines the elements of their life together: their Vietnamese rose-colored folding table where they eat their meals, each of the New Year’s Eves they’ve shared, their friendships, and their most intimate exchanges. With everything in flux, she searches for the facets that will remain. Hanne Ørstavik writes, “I have a compulsion for truth that feels like my very life force itself.” Tentative, laced with a tingling frankness, Ørstavik’s prose adheres so closely to the inner workings of its narrator’s mind as to nearly undo itself.

Hanne Ørstavik published the novel Cut in 1994 and embarked on a career that would make her one of the most remarkable and admired authors in Norwegian contemporary literature. Her literary breakthrough came three years later with the publication of Love (Kjærlighet), which in 2006 was voted the 6th best Norwegian book of the last 25 years in a prestigious contest in Dagbladet, and won the 2019 PEN Translation Prize. Since then, the author has written several acclaimed and much discussed novels and received a host of literary prizes.

Tess Lewis is a translator from German and French and an Advisory Editor of The Hudson Review.  She has been awarded translation grants from PEN America and PEN UK, an NEA Translation Fellowship, and a Max Geilinger Translation Grant for her translation of Philippe Jaccottet.  She also writes essays on European literature for numerous literary journals including The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, World Literature Today, The American Scholar, and Bookforum.