The Singularity
Balsam Karam
(Author)
Saskia Vogel
(Translator)
Description
Lyrical and devastating, The Singularity is a breathtaking study of grief, migration, and motherhood from one of Sweden's most exciting new novelists.In an unnamed coastal city filled with refugees, the mother of a displaced family calls out her daughter's name as she wanders the cliffside road where the child once worked. The mother searches and searches until, spent from grief, she throws herself into the sea, leaving her other children behind. Bearing witness to the suicide is another woman--on a business trip, with a swollen belly that later gives birth to a stillborn baby. In the wake of her pain, the second woman remembers other losses--of a language, a country, an identity--when once, her family fled a distant war.Balsam Karam weaves between both narratives in this formally ambitious novel and offers a fresh approach to language and aesthetic as she decenters a white European gaze. Her English-language debut, The Singularity is a powerful exploration of loss, history, and memory--an experience akin to "drinking directly from a flood of tears" (Aftonbladet).Product Details
Price
$16.95
$15.76
Publisher
Feminist Press
Publish Date
January 24, 2024
Pages
200
Dimensions
4.9 X 7.9 X 0.8 inches | 0.6 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781558611931
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About the Author
Balsam Karam (b. 1983) is of Kurdish ancestry and has lived in Sweden since she was a young child. She is an author, librarian, and university lecturer, and made her literary debut in 2018 with the critically acclaimed Event Horizon, which was shortlisted for the Katapult Prize. The Singularity was shortlisted for the August Prize and is her second novel, published in Sweden in 2021.
Saskia Vogel is the author of Permission and the translator of over twenty Swedish-language books. She was awarded the Berlin Senate Endowment for Non-German Literature and was a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize. She worked on The Singularity as part of her translation residency at Princeton University. From Los Angeles, she now lives in Berlin.
Reviews
"Astringent, fuguelike. . . . A knotty, sui generis evocation of mothers' feelings of fear and loss." --Kirkus Reviews
"I don't know anyone who writes like Balsam Karam. She blows me away. Truly one of the most original and extraordinary voices to come out of Scandinavia in. . . forever. You'll realize twenty minutes after you've finished The Singularity that you're still sitting there, holding on to it." --Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove
"The Singularity by Balsam Karam is a novel about loss and longing--a mother who misses her child, children who miss their mother, and all of those who miss their country as they try to feel the new earth in their new land. A deeply moving work of fiction from a true voice of Scandinavia." --Shahrnush Parsipur, author of Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran"Balsam Karam writes at the limits of narrative, limning the boundary of loss where 'no space remains between bodies in the singularity.' With a lucid intimacy, Karam braids a story of witness and motherhood that fractures from within only to rebuild memory and home on its own terms. The Singularity is a book of conviction, where those who have been made to disappear find light and keep their secrets too." --Shazia Hafiz Ramji, author of Port of Being
"Lyrical, devastating, and completely original, The Singularity is a work of extraordinary vision and heart. Balsam Karam's writing is formally inventive and stylistically breathtaking, and Saskia Vogel's translation does shining justice to its poetic precision and depths." --Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath "Balsam Karam's new novel is enormously powerful. . . . To read The Singularity is like drinking directly from a flood of tears." --Aftonbladet (Sweden)
"A novel that appears to have been created from dark matter, elusive, giddying and with an enormous linguistic and narrative density." --Expressen (Sweden)
"Balsam Karam's language is entirely her own. It is poetic and suggestive. Sometimes like one big stream-of-consciousness, where two different scenarios are portrayed in parallel. To be here and now and at the same time in the past. To carry one's losses, engraved on one's body like deep wounds. Because who can rank traumas, as the novel suggests. The loss of a child, a language, a country, an identity. . . . The Singularity is a journey into a black hole. A point of no return." --Jönköpings-Posten (Sweden)
"I don't know anyone who writes like Balsam Karam. She blows me away. Truly one of the most original and extraordinary voices to come out of Scandinavia in. . . forever. You'll realize twenty minutes after you've finished The Singularity that you're still sitting there, holding on to it." --Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove
"The Singularity by Balsam Karam is a novel about loss and longing--a mother who misses her child, children who miss their mother, and all of those who miss their country as they try to feel the new earth in their new land. A deeply moving work of fiction from a true voice of Scandinavia." --Shahrnush Parsipur, author of Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran"Balsam Karam writes at the limits of narrative, limning the boundary of loss where 'no space remains between bodies in the singularity.' With a lucid intimacy, Karam braids a story of witness and motherhood that fractures from within only to rebuild memory and home on its own terms. The Singularity is a book of conviction, where those who have been made to disappear find light and keep their secrets too." --Shazia Hafiz Ramji, author of Port of Being
"Lyrical, devastating, and completely original, The Singularity is a work of extraordinary vision and heart. Balsam Karam's writing is formally inventive and stylistically breathtaking, and Saskia Vogel's translation does shining justice to its poetic precision and depths." --Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath "Balsam Karam's new novel is enormously powerful. . . . To read The Singularity is like drinking directly from a flood of tears." --Aftonbladet (Sweden)
"A novel that appears to have been created from dark matter, elusive, giddying and with an enormous linguistic and narrative density." --Expressen (Sweden)
"Balsam Karam's language is entirely her own. It is poetic and suggestive. Sometimes like one big stream-of-consciousness, where two different scenarios are portrayed in parallel. To be here and now and at the same time in the past. To carry one's losses, engraved on one's body like deep wounds. Because who can rank traumas, as the novel suggests. The loss of a child, a language, a country, an identity. . . . The Singularity is a journey into a black hole. A point of no return." --Jönköpings-Posten (Sweden)
