Description

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024
WINNER OF THE AUGUST PRIZE 2022 (BEST FICTION)

‘[A] miraculous sort of novel’ Hernan Diaz
‘I wish I could write like this’ Fredrik Backman
‘So good that I kept underlining passages so I could reread them later’ Mark Haddon
‘Mesmerizing and hot to the touch’ THE NEW YORK TIMES
‘Textured insights into human nature’ NEW YORKER
‘Wistfully recalls a time when what was lost stayed lost’ THE TIMES

A famous broadcaster writes a forgotten love letter; a friend abruptly disappears; a lover leaves something unexpected behind; a traumatised woman is consumed by her own anxiety.

In the throes of a high fever, a woman lies bedridden. Suddenly, she is struck with an urge to revisit a particular novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a message from an ex-girlfriend.

Pages from her past begin to flip, full of things she cannot forget and people who cannot be forgotten. Johanna, that same ex-girlfriend, now a famous TV host. Niki, the friend who disappeared all those years ago. Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Birgitte, whose elusive qualities shield a painful secret.

Who is the real subject of a portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? The Details is a novel built around four such portraits, unveiling the fragments of memory and experience that make up a life. In exhilarating, provocative prose, Ia Genberg reveals an intimate and powerful celebration of what it means to be human.

MORE PRAISE FOR THE DETAILS:

‘A novel that, through its very bones, encapsulates one of the most important ideas of our current political moment – the necessity of connection, and our vulnerability to one other’ Susannah Dickey, author of TENNIS LESSONS
‘A woozy, affecting dive into desire, domination and memory’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘An ode to the different kinds of love that form us . . . I won’t forget this beautiful book’ Jenna Clake, author of DISTURBANCE
‘A fever dream . . . A feat of characterization, a triumph of lending language and profundity to observations of daily life’ LITERARY HUB

Publisher Review

Textured insights into human nature. * The New Yorker * This beautiful, moving book unfolds in four stand-alone portraits that, together, yield a sharp, poignant picture of the portraitist. The narrative blurs the boundaries that separate memoir from fiction, past from present, and self from other, which evokes the spell of fever during which it was written. The miraculous sort of novel that fuses with our personal memories and becomes part of us -- Hernan Diaz, author of TRUST The Details is about relationships, about love, about parents and children...about all of it. The little observations about being young, and about growing up, and about getting lost by accident, and getting lost on purpose, searching for yourself in everyone else...damn it, I've underlined half of the book. I wish I could write like this. -- Fredrik Backman, New York Times bestselling author of A MAN CALLED OVE Brief and penetrating . . . Genberg's marvellous prose is also a kind of fever, mesmerizing and hot to the touch -- Catherine Lacey * New York Times * The nonlinear narrative renders the protagonist both vivid and obscure - the perfect conduit for this compelling, uncannily precise meditation on transience. -- Hephzibah Anderson * Observer * Emotionally nuanced and formally innovative, Ia Genberg's beautiful novel The Details manages the remarkable feat of painting a whole picture of a single life, solely via the lives of the people who have touched it. This is a novel that, through its very bones, encapsulates one of the most important ideas of our current political moment - the necessity of connection, and our vulnerability to one other. -- Susannah Dickey, author of TENNIS LESSONS In four succinct and arresting portraits, the narrator of The Details remembers the people who have shaped her life. At once humorous and heartbreaking, this book is an ode to the different kinds of love that form us. It asks how we hold onto the people who touch us, how we remember them, and whether we should ever let them go. I won't forget this beautiful book. -- Jenna Clake, author of DISTURBANCE It's difficult to describe the experience of reading Ia Genberg's English language debut beyond saying that it resembles a fever dream . . . Genberg's prose is a feat of characterization, a triumph of lending language and profundity to observations of daily life. At a tight 150 pages, I didn't read it so much as subconsciously absorb it. -- Eliza Smith * Literary Hub *