Mirjam Kristensen
An Afternoon in Autumn

The young married couple Rakel and Hans Olav are on holiday in New York. They visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Hans Olav lingers by a painting by the French court painter Georges de La Tour, while Rakel goes to the ladies room. When she returns, Hans Olav is gone. The security guard says she saw him leave the room with another woman.

Over the next few weeks Rakel searches every corner of the city to find out what might have taken place. Has something horrible happened to Hans Olav, or did he disappear out of free will? How can a person simply vanish? Among others, Rakel meets the wealthy couple Hanna and Harold Stern, who say it is easy to be seduced by a city like New York, and a strange antiquarian who has found Hans Olav’s wallet, and claims he has a camera that can photograph the dead.

An Afternoon in Autumn explores, amongst other things, the basic question: How well can you really know another person? In a clear and rhythmic prose Mirjam Kristensen writes the novel about Rakel who has to find her way in existence all over again.

Mirjam Kristensen

Mirjam Kristensen

Mirjam Kristensen (b 1978) is from Lyngdal in Norway. She made her debut in 2000 with the novel The Days Are Transparent for which she received Tarjei Vesaas’ First Book Award. For Those Who Are Out in the Rain she received Sørlandets Literature Prize. In 2007 she received Bjørnson's Scholarship.

Rights sold to

French (Phébus), German (Dörlemann Verlag)

Other titles

Jeg har ventet på deg, 2014
Et rikt liv, 2009
En ettermiddag om høsten, 2006
De som er ute i regnværet, 2001
Dagene er gjennomsiktige, 2000

Foreign rights

Oslo Literary Agency
Henrik Francke
Literary Agent, Literary fiction /
Forlaget Oktober
[email protected]
+47 913 53 922

Awards

The Amalie Skram Prize 2010
The Bjørnson's Scholarship 2007
Sørlandets Literature Prize 2001
Tarjei Vesaas’ First Book Award 2000

Edited December 21, 2017 by Oslo Literary Agency