Blizzard

ORIGINAL TITLE: Snöstorm

AUTHOR: Augustin Erba-Odescalchi

ORIGINAL PUBLISHER: Albert Bonniers förlag

GENRE: Fiction

Tomas is on a train in the middle of Sweden when a blizzard descends, halting all train traffic. On his way to the dining car someone calls his name, and it all comes rushing back. It’s Livli, the great love of his youth. The one who broke his heart.Blizzard is the story of Tomas and Livli, who first crossed paths as students at a claustrophobic college. They both harbor painful experiences and, without understanding why themselves, their fates will become intertwined.Augustin Erba’s third novel is about love and grief, memories and happiness, what life became and what it could have become. It explores the choices we make in our youth, and the choices we still have ahead of us.

Reviews

OPEN

“I read the final hundred pages in one sitting, incapable of putting the novel down, and once I close the book it’s like waking up; hard to distinguish dream from reality.

It was just a dream. It was just a novel.

A reaction like that would have to be considered a very good grade.”

DT

“What is it that hooks you once you start reading a novel, hooks you somewhere in the chest? What is it that makes us turn page after page, forgetting everything else as if we were fishes on an actual hook?

In Augustin Erba’s novel BLIZZARD I swallow the bait in the very first scene.”

Dagens Nyheter

“As a reader I long for entering, and remaining in, the truth of the novel. When Augustin Erba is at the pen it is made possible. On his last book, BLOOD BOUND, Lina Kalmteg wrote that ‘Erba is the answer to the many desperate cries for an epic storyteller in Sweden’. It is not hard to concur.”

SvD

“I only have one objection. It’s a shame that Erba chose not to turn this book into a thriller so that he could kill Livli in a particularly drawn out way. He manages to write a sentiment so strong that I want her dead.

Truth is not relevant. A true artist creates things that moves the recipient. This is what Erba does.”

Aftonbladet

"Tomas is betrayed, over and over again. His parents files for a divorce after the death of the baby brother, the father moves to the US and the mother suffers from mental illness, forcing Tomas to live with uncle David. It is a complicated childhood, particularly since David seeks illegal intimacy when he’s feeling alone. Therefore, the University and living on his own makes for a much welcome refuge for Tomas. However, he finds himself being betrayed once more, this time by Livli with whom he falls madly in love. 

Some twenty years later he meets her again, one a train forced to a halt by a blizzard. What would life be if they had stuck together and Tomas hadn’t been so eager to please her? Augustin Erba truly compels the reader with his unobtrusive language. The three parts of the novel aligns with the purpose: they skillfully tread in the path of Tomas’ life, observes his interests during the separate parts of growing up, until he is a middle aged man with a family and work. Slowly he finds himself, and it is touchingly portrayed."
Rated 5/5
BTJ

Rights sold

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Film rights sold to Filmlance