November’s edition of our literary salon will host the translator from Norwegian, Veronika Česká. She’ll talk to us about her first-ever literary translation, the book Forgive Me by Ida Hegazi Høyer, the Norwegian writer with Danish-Egyptian roots. The book has been published by Lidové Noviny publishing house in 2022.
The event will be streamed on Tuesday, November 22 from 8 pm on our Facebook page. The recording will afterwards be available on our YouTube channel.
Free admission, no registration needed.
Forgive Me (Unnskyld, 2014) is an intense novel about love, self-deception and dangerous secrets.
In Ida Hegazi Høyer’s third book, a young woman meets a young man, and it’s love at first sight. He is a student of philosophy who impresses her deeply with his intellectual talk of individualism and his free spirit – he seems like the perfect man. They move into a small apartment, and in the days and weeks and months to come they become completely engulfed by one another. But it does not take long before she starts harbouring feelings of unease. Small signs, small oddities suggesting that he might not be what he appears to be. Forgive Me explores the darker sides of everyday life, in a realism that borders onto the dreamlike and absurd, with a language that entices and surprises the reader, and through the use of black comedy.
Ida Hegazi Høyer, born in 1981, is a Norwegian citizen with Danish-Egyptian ancestors. Her roots are in Lofoten in the north of Norway, but she grew up in Oslo. Høyer has studied sociology and worked in a clothing store, and she now writes and lives in Oslomarka – the woodlands surrounding Oslo. She is the author of three novels: her debut, Under the World, was published in autumn 2012, followed by Out in 2013 and Forgive Me in 2014. In August 2014 she was the recipient of Norway’s Bjørnsonstipendet, awarded to a prominent young talent.
Veronika Česká studied Norwegian and French language. Forgive me is her first literary translation.
The partner of the event are the Czech translators of the North – an organisation uniting Czech translators from Nordic languages. The event is a part of a year-long project of the Scandinavian House: “Nordic literature in the heart of Europe 2022”, which has been supported by Prague municipality and the Czech Ministry of Culture.
