Nicolai Houm
The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland

With the pace and attention to detail as the best tv-series
«She read that it usually ends with you undressing. One last fatal
misunderstanding of the situation. So there you are, in your underwear,
taut skin blue from the cold, large eyes numb and frozen.
And, finally, draped in a shroud of fresh snow that must gently be
brushed away once you are found. In the fog, she looks no different
than a boulder within arm’s reach. And if she tilts her head to
the left, the orange tent covered in white frost begins to look like a
mouldy orange.»
An American woman wakes up alone in a tent in the Norwegian
mountains. Outside there is a storm and the fog is dense. Her cell
phone is dead. She doesn’t have a map or a compass or any food.
She actually came to Norway to seek out distant relatives, but when
her trip goes awry she contacts a zoologist she met by chance on
the plane. She ends up accompanying him on a musk oxen hike
through the Dovrefjell mountain range, but here too everything
goes wrong.
Out of the mist a picture gradually emerges of a past, a personal
disaster, and a desperate search for new meaning. Even those you
have lost everything, still have something to lose.

«As with his previous novel Here’s What’s Wrong with
The Lindbergs Nicolai Houm combines both surgically
precise observations with the pace and attention to
detail as the best tv-series. The similarities with Don
De Lillo and Jonathan Franzen cannot be denied.»

Dagens Næringsliv

Nicolai Houm

Nicolai Houm (b. 1974) debuted with the critically acclaimed novel
Knekk nakken min venn (Break Your Neck, Dear Friend) in 2004. Since
then he has written a collection of short stories and a picture book.
Nicolai Houm’s novel De håpefulle (Here’s What’s Wrong with
The Lindebergs) provided his commercial breakthrough in 2013.

Other titles

2004: Knekk nakken, min venn (novel)
2009: Alle barn er laget av ild (short stories)
2011: Når alle sover(children book
2013: De håpefulle (novel)

Foreign rights

Please contact:
Copenhagen Literary Agency
Monica Gram
[email protected]

Awards

Nominated for Youth's critics award
Nominated for the Ministry of Culture's picture book price
Nominated for the Ypsilon Prize Nominated for the Bookkeeper Prize
Winner of the Bookblogger Prize - The Year's Novel 2016 for The Gradual Disappearance ofJane Ashland

Edited December 06, 2017 by Tiden Norsk Forlag