Agnes Ravatn
The Guests

The vacation house wasn’t flashy—it was disturbingly perfect. Muted wood, glass, and stone gleamed with quiet elegance, a reminder of lives Karin and Kai could never quite measure up to.

At first, there was nothing to mock, nothing to laugh at—only the faint, prickling awareness that they were out of place.

Reluctantly, they accept the offer to borrow the luxurious house by the Oslofjord. What should have been a brief escape quickly becomes a game of appearances. When they meet the neighbors, a celebrated writer couple, Karin tells a small white lie — and one fib soon multiplies into another. Trapped in a spiral of polite deception and subtle social maneuvering, Karin and Kai must navigate the thin line between charm, ambition, and embarrassment, all while the house watches silently.

Agnes Ravatn

Agnete Brun

Agnes Ravatn (b. 1983) made her debut with the novel Week 53 in 2007, followed by three critically acclaimed and award-winning essay collections: Standing still (2011), Popular Reading (2011) and Operation self-discipline (2014). Her award-winning novel The Bird Tribunal (2013), became an international bestseller, was translated into twentyone languages, and made into a successful play. In 2019, she published the psychological thriller The Seven Doors, which, amongst other awards, was longlisted for the CWA International Dagger. In 2022 she published The Guests , which confirmed her position as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary Nordic literature.