Collected Works: A Novel

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'HOW CAN ANYONE LEAVE SOMEONE THEY LOVE'Martin Berg is falling into crisis. Decades ago, he was an aspiring writer, his girlfriend was the wildly intelligent Cecilia Wickner, and his best friend was the hellraising artist Gustav Becker. But Martin's manuscript is now languishing in a drawer, Gustav has stopped answering his calls, and Cecilia has vanished - leaving him to raise their children alone.Cecilia: an eccentric wife and absent mother, a woman who was perhaps only true to herself. When Rakel stumbles across a clue as to why her mother left, she sets out to fill the gaps in her family's story and discovers that some questions have no clear answers...

'Collected Works absorbed me and wouldn't let me go. A novel of the first-order-sprawling, searching, funny, sad, and incredibly smart. Sandgren has written a masterpiece that lays claim to the totality of modern life. A novel to make the world believe in fiction again.' - Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans

Reviews

'Meet Sweden's Sally Rooney . . . a love-triangle, arty chit-chat, and lots of snow and sex . . . Sandgren strikes a nice balance between comedy and coming of age . . . A lovely atmosphere to lose yourself in . . . Gorgeous and heightened and full of glittering, icy people' - The Times

'A wry bestseller that reads like the effortlessly chic European cousin of Fleishman is in Trouble . . . Sandgren has a sly eye for comedy . . . Part bildungsroman, part psychological mystery and part family saga . . . embraces the mess, misunderstandings and inscrutabilities that constitute peoples real people living real lives . . . A novel to savour' - Telegraph

'Utterly gripping... like the films of Richard Linklater transmuted to the page... a magnificent doorstop of a novel' - Guardian

'A witty, toothy, family saga... a confidently ambitious work that holds art, literature and philosophy close to its heart... an assured, bittersweet novel that, like youth, seems to have it all' - Financial Times

'A wide-ranging exploration of family and friends, art and ambition that more than lives up to the hype' - Marie-Claire, Best New Books of 2023

Author Bio

Lydia Sandgren is the eldest of seven siblings brought up in the west of Sweden. She has studied music and philosophy and is a practising psychologist, living in Gothenburg. Collected Works is her bestselling debut novel; it won the highly prestigious August Prize in 2020.Agnes Broome is a literary translator and academic in Scandinavian at Harvard University. With a PhD in Translation Studies, her translations include August Prize winners The Expedition by Bea Uusma, The Gospel of Eels by Patrik Svensson, and Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren.