Hanne Ørstavik presents ‘Ti Amo’

Third Place Books is thrilled to welcome Hanne Ørstavik to their Ravenna neighborhood store! Ørstavik is the author of three novels translated into English by Martin Aitken—Love, The Pastor, and Ti Amo—and the forthcoming publication of stay with me from Archipelago Books. Ørstavik was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2018. Ti Amo is her most recent book translated into English.

For important updates, registration is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!

What can be found within a gaze? What lies inside a painting or behind a handful of repeated words? These are the questions that haunt our unnamed narrator as she 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. In Martin Aitken’s translation, Ørstavik’s piercing story sings.