Broken - Softcover

Fossum, Karin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099565536 ISBN 13: 9780099565536

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2012

Synopsis

A gripping novel set on the boundary between fact and fiction.

A woman wakes one night to find that a strange man has walked into her bedroom. She lies there in terrified silence unable to move. The woman is an author and the man one of her prospective characters. So desperate is he to have his story told that he has resorted to breaking into her house to make her tell it.

She creates Alvar Eide, forty-two years old, single, who works in an art gallery. He lives a quiet, dutiful life, carefully designed to avoid surprises. One winter’s day, all this begins to change when an emaciated young heroin addict walks into the gallery. A kind man, Alvar gives her a cup of coffee to warm her up. She returns some weeks later to his place of work, and then one day appears on his doorstep demanding to be let in.

Interspersed with the chapters of Alvar’s story are his encounters with its author — the frantic attempts of a fictional man trying to control his own destiny. Broken is a gripping novel about the boundary between fact and fiction and the perils of good intentions.

About this title

Book Description

HMH hardcover, 2010
Previous ISBN 978-0-15-101366-1

From the Back Cover

“I always eagerly await a new novel from Karin Fossum.”—Ruth Rendell

“She is a master of the slow build, the controlled burn.”—Chicago Tribune

A woman wakes up in the middle of the night. A strange man is in her bedroom. She lies there in silence, paralyzed with fear. The woman is an author and the man one of her characters, one in a long line that waits in her driveway for the time when she’ll tell their story. He is so desperately eager for his story to be told that he has resorted to breaking into her house and demanding that she begin.
      He, the author decides, is named Alvar Eide, forty-two years old, single, works in a gallery. He lives a quiet, orderly life and likes it that way—no demands, no unpleasantness. Until an icy winter afternoon when a young drug addict, skinny and fragile, walks into the gallery. Alvar gives her a cup of coffee to warm her up. She returns to the gallery a few weeks later, and then one day she appears on his doorstep.

“Haunting . . . The author’s narrative skills are on dazzling display.”—Washington Post

Karin Fossum is the author of the internationally successful Inspector Konrad Sejer crime series. She received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for her novel The Indian Bride. She lives in a small town in southeastern Norway.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0099565536
• ISBN 13: 9780099565536
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272