Mother May I

The case of the Norwegian writer Vigdis Hjorth is a curious one. Born in 1959 and greatly admired in her native Norway, Hjorth has written more than twenty books. But it was her 2016 novel Will and Testament, a family drama about an inheritance dispute and the revelation of sexual abuse in a Norwegian family resembling Hjorth’s own, that finally won her wide international and critical acclaim. The novel, translated into a subtle and fluent English by Charlotte Barslund, was longlisted for the National Book Award in the United States.