The Helios Disaster

Translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles

Linda Boström Knausgård

My father existed somewhere. He lived and breathed there. Did he ever think of me, his daughter? Did he yearn for me?

Linda Boström Knausgård narrates mental illness and hallucination with a tension so powerful and poetic that it recalls Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The Helios Disaster is a contemporary mythical tale set in a strange and unsettling world. A father gives birth to a twelve-year-old girl and after they become separated the girl is placed into foster care. When she starts speaking in tongues, she’s admitted to a psychiatric ward. All the time, she aches to for her father….Knausgård’s ambitious and dizzying novel powerfully illuminates what it is like to slide irresistibly away from reality and into a near-psychotic state.

The Helios Disaster is one of four novels launching the new imprint World Editions

• Passionate, refined and as clear as cool water

  Aftonbladet

• Reading The Helios Disaster takes only couple of hours but it has a lasting, haunting effect.

  Petri Stenman, Like Publishing