Reviews

Laura Lindstedt Drawing Accolades with MY FRIEND NATALIA

Finland’s most dynamic novelists, Laura Lindstedt, bursts onto the American literary scene with her novel MY FRIEND NATALIA – an erotic story of an ambitious therapist’s sessions with an unforgettable patient. The novel is published by prestigious W.W. Norton / Liveright, and translated by award-winning David Hackston. MY FRIEND NATALIA is already listed as The New York Times Editor’s choice! In addition, the review of the book in New York Times is exciting:

“— This is the book’s tease, that Natalia — eccentric, unruly, compelling — will be definitively “solved.” But she’s not a dramatic principal, not a thing able to fire real bullets. This was her psychologist’s figure of speech and as such probably tells us more about the psychologist than the patient. The deeper, indeed more layered, mystery is, it emerges, the novel’s chimerical narrator. — Laura Lindstedt’s sly, intriguing novel.” –Hermione Hoby, New York Times 

You can read the NYT review here.

MY FRIEND NATALIA is already Entertainment Weekly’s ‘Best Book of The Month’ & ’20 Must-read Books of the Month’

“This provocative Finnish author enters the fray of American literature (thanks to translation from David Hackston) with a racy, wonderfully weird novel about a therapist’s sessions with a sex-obsessed woman.” – Entertainment Weekly, 1.3.2021

MY FRIEND NATALIA is praised in BuzzFeed as one of ‘Spring Books We Couldn’t Put Down’

Laura has yesterday been interviewed by Shelf-Awareness where she reveals some secrets about what’s inspired her. Check the article from here.

Scandinavia House in New York City will host AN EVENT on Saturday 10 April for a book talk with Laura Lindstedt and translator David Hackston on MY FRIEND NATALIA, the author’s U.S. debut. The event will take place as a Zoom webinar; please ask questions in the chat or send them in advance to  info@amscan.org. Registration is required; please sign up through the link here.

The exciting literary novel will be published in 13 territories, but the rights are still available in Denmark, Russia, Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey, Bulgaria, Latvia, China, Spain, Iceland, Japan etc.

Download the full English manuscript and praise sheet for MY FRIEND NATALIA by clicking here

MY FRIEND NATALIA
by Laura Lindstedt
Natalia cannot stop thinking about sex. A mesmerizing tale of one woman’s potent affliction by award-winning Finnish writer Laura Lindstedt. Narrated by an unnamed, ungendered therapist who leaps at the chance to employ their most experimental methods, My Friend Natalia offers a gripping examination of the power dynamics always present but rarely ever spoken about in therapy. “Something flared within me,” the therapist notes, “and it wasn’t merely sympathy, the emotion I feel for most of my clients. It was more like a sudden experience of harmony, wholly inappropriate given the circumstances.”

 

AUTHOR

Laura Lindstedt (b. 1976) became a critical darling with her adoption-themed debut novel Scissors (Sakset, Teos 2007), which earned her a nomination for the Finlandia Prize, the country’s most prestigious literary honour. She is currently revising her Ph.D. thesis on French author Nathalie Sarraute. Lindstedt’s second novel Oneiron (Teos 2015) is a work of speculative fiction that takes place in the mysterious moments that follow one’s death. Oneiron has continued Lindstedt’s critical success, earning her the coveted 2015 Finlandia Prize. Lindstedt’s latest novel My Friend Natalia has been a critical success and the rights have been sold to 13 territories.