Ti Amo
ABOUT
THE BOOK
A woman is in a deep and real, but relatively new relationship with a man from Milan. She has moved there, they have married, and they are close in every way. Then he is diagnosed with cancer. It’s serious, but they try to go about their lives as best they can. But when the doctor tells the woman that her husband has less than a year to live – without telling the husband – death comes between them. She knows it’s coming, but he doesn’t – and he doesn’t seem to want to know. An incredibly beautiful and harrowing novel, filled with tenderness and grief, love and loneliness.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Martin
Aitken
Martin Aitken’s translations of Scandinavian literature are numerous. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the DUBLIN Literary Award (2017) and the US Book Awards (2018), as well as the 2021 International Booker Prize. For his translation of Hanne Ørstavik’s Love he received the 2019 PEN America Translation Prize.
Martin Aitken’s translations of Scandinavian literature are numerous. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the DUBLIN Literary Award (2017) and the US Book Awards (2018), as well as the 2021 International Booker Prize. For his translation of Hanne Ørstavik’s Love he received the 2019 PEN America Translation Prize.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
Ti Amo is a moving story about a couple’s relationship; about love and death. Ørstavik depicts the brutal disease pancreatic cancer in its last, terminal phase. Neither of them is able to talk about death, even though it is constantly close to them. How can life go on after the death of her husband? Ti Amo is not a sentimental novel, but bleak and honest.