Stay with Me

A breathless, propulsive look into the caustic sides of love, from the beloved Norwegian winner of the PEN translation prize and National Book Award Finalist

“What is so impressive is Ørstavik's ability to capture — with precision, candor and, indeed, tenacity — her shifting sense of self, as the foundations on which it rests crumble with every passing moment.”  — Toby Lichtig, The Wall Street Journal

Fear is a second skin for the unnamed narrator of Hanne Ørstavik’s Stay With Me. A successful writer at 53, her father may be a frail twig, but the fear from her past, and of her father's rage, still envelopes her.

In urgent prose, the contours of her life emerge: a 12-year marriage, the death of her lover L, her troubled relationship with M — 15 years her junior and vexed with an all-too-familiar rage. We waver between our narrator’s life and the life of Judith, the protagonist of her nascent novel. Judith is a Norwegian costume designer who falls in love with Myrto, a conductor in an orchestra, who she moves with to Minneapolis. Pulled between the cities of Minneapolis, Oslo, and Milan, and the voice of Judith and her own, our narrator writes with an unparalleled emotional intimacy.

What results is the recursive voice of someone gasping for breath: Who are Pappa, and M, without their rage? Who am I, without my fear? Who am I reaching for, when I reach for Judith? With Martin Aikten’s careful translation, Hanne Ørstavik unravels the binds that fasten us to those we love — why we return despite immeasurable pain, and why we finally, justly, leave.

Hanne Ørstavik published the debut novel Cut in 1994. Her literary breakthrough came three years later with the publication of Love (Kjærlighet), which in 2006 was voted the 6th best Norwegian book of the last 25 years in a prestigious contest in Dagbladet, and won the 2019 PEN Translation Prize. Her books Ti Amo, The Pastor, and now Stay with Me have made her one of the most celebrated contemporary Norwegian writers.

Martin Aitken is the acclaimed translator of numerous novels from Danish and Norwegian, including works by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Peter Høeg, Jussi Adler-Olsen, Fine Gråbøl, Ida Jessen, and Pia Juul. In 2019, he was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for his translation of Love by Hanne Ørstavik.