Vigdis Hjorth and Catherine Taylor: Repetition

Norwegian writer Vigdis Hjorth has been a shop favourite ever since we discovered Long Live the Post Horn, a powerful tale about loneliness told through the microcosm of the Norwegian postal service. Hjorth joined us in the Bookshop to read from Repetition (Verso) – her sixth novel to be published in English – translated by her indefatigable champion Charlotte Barslund.

As winter approaches and daylight dwindles, a chance encounter prompts a novelist to re-examine her past. The seismic events following her sixteenth birthday return with haunting vividness, exposing a story both utterly familiar and desperately strange. Hjorth was in conversation with Catherine Taylor, a writer, critic, and the former deputy director of English PEN. Her first book, The Stirrings, won the 2024 TLS Ackerley Prize for memoir and life-writing.