October Child

Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel

2022 Longlist

From 2013 to 2017, the narrator was periodically interned in a psychiatric ward where she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. As the treatments at this “factory” progressed, the writer’s memories began to disappear. What good is a writer without her memory?

This novel, based on the author’s experiences, is an eloquent and profound attempt to hold on to the past, to create a story, to make sense, and to keep alive ties to family, friends, and even oneself. Moments from childhood, youth, marriage, parenting, and divorce flicker across the pages of October Child. This is the story of one woman’s struggle against mental illness and isolation. It is a raw testimony of how writing can preserve and heal.

About the Author/Translator

Linda Boström Knausgård is a Swedish author, poet, and producer of radio documentaries. Her first novel, The Helios Disaster, was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the United States. Welcome to America, her second novel, was nominated for a number of awards including the prestigious Swedish August Prize. October Child became a bestseller in Sweden and throughout Scandinavia.

Saskia Vogel is a writer and Swedish-to-English literary translator. Her translations include work by leading female authors, such as Katrine Marcal, Karolina Ramqvist, Lina Wolff, and the modernist eroticist Rut Hillarp. Her debut novel Permission was published in four languages in 2019.

Librarian’s Comments

A deeply personal novel about how to live and survive in this world. An aggressive settlement with psychiatry. Gripping and breathtaking. The novel is full of memorable sentences: “… my brain was shot through with so much electricity that they were sure I wouldn’t be able to write this.” Oslo Public Library (Deichman), Norway