Oneiron nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize

Laura Lindstedt’s Oneiron has been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. The prestigious prize is given annually to a work of literature that meets high literary and artistic standards, written in a Nordic language.

“Lindstedt’s artistic playfulness with the conventions of language, style, and prose makes the novel linguistically refined and impressive. The result is a work of multiple voices and multiple layers, in which modern expressions also assume something brilliantly classical. It is as if the author is striving to reach the infinite small details – the fractals – as she writes whole worlds within the space of the blink of an eye. The white reality of Oneiron, a blank page, is filled with living stories that celebrate human fantasy, with the possibilities that literature affords, and with uncompromising artistic work,” the jury motivated Oneiron’s nomination.

The prize is worth 350,000 Danish kroner. The winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize will be announced and the prize awarded on 1 November 2017 at Finlandia Hall in Helsinki. Among the previous winners of the prize are for example the Nobel Laureates Tomas Tranströmer and Eyvind Johnson.

Oneiron won the Finlandia Prize 2015, and has sold 50,000 copies to date. The rights are sold in 12 territories, and the work has so far been published in four languages, to great reviews. The novel centers around seven women, each from a different country and unfamiliar to one another, who come together in a white, undefined space just seconds after their respective deaths.

Click here to request reading materials of Oneiron!

Laura Lindstedt is an award-winning author and literary scholar. Her novels verge on the postmodern and experiment with form and language in an accessible style. She is currently revising her Ph.D. thesis on the French author Nathalie Sarraute.