Additional information
by Maria Navarro Skaranger (Author), Martin Aitken (Translator)
In this novel about poverty, social inequality, and class contempt in Norway, nineteen-year-old supermarket worker Emily is single, pregnant, and struggling to make ends meet.
Em's nineteen years old and pregnant. Her boyfriend Pablo has gone out "to take care of something" and hasn't returned. Her mother, who raised Emily alone, moves into the little apartment to help. Meanwhile, Em's neighbour, who may or may not be a clergyman, wonders if it's normal to be so infatuated with someone you've never spoken to. Em's boss at the supermarket might have feelings for her too, if only she'd notice. Emily Forever is a poignant, achingly hard-hitting book about class and about digging deep to find what it takes to get by. At the same time, it's a deeply original exploration of how a girl like Emily is seen from the outside, by those who think they know who she is and how her life is supposed to pan out. Empathetic and quizzical, and scathingly humorous, Emily Forever is a novel of unyielding solidarity and smoldering social dissent, by a new star of Scandinavian literature.
Author Biography
MARIA NAVARRO SKARANGER was born in 1994 in Oslo and made her debut in 2015 with Alle utlendinger har lukka gardiner (All Foreigners Keep Their Curtains Closed). Hailed for its prose--a groundbreaking and
highly stylized immigrant-influenced Oslo vernacular--the book was nominated for
the Tarjei Vesaas First Book Award and also won the Debut Prize 2015 in Norway.
Her acclaimed second novel, Bok om sorg (Book of Grief), was awarded the Oslo Prize and the EU
Prize for Literature. Skaranger won the Missing Voice Prize 2022 for her latest
novel, Emily Forever, her
international breakthrough.
MARTIN AITKEN's translations of contemporary Scandinavian literature are numerous. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the International DUBLIN Literary Award and the US National Book Awards, as well as the 2021 International Booker Prize. He received the PEN America Translation Prize in 2019, and most recently the 2022 US National Translation Award for Prose. He lives and works in Denmark.
