{"product_id":"if-only-9781839768880","title":"If Only","description":"\u003cb\u003eA passionate and groundbreaking bestseller from one of Norway's most highly-regarded and award-winning novelists, for readers of Annie Ernaux's \u003ci\u003eA Simple Passion \u003c\/i\u003eand Coco Mellors' \u003ci\u003eCleopatra and Frankenstein\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eA relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter. January and minus 14 C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the mailbox on its post, but higher up the sky is blue, clear, the sun has come back. She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. She has an impending sense of doom or possibly her own death.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSo opens Vigids Hjorth's ground-breaking novel from 2001, which melds the yearning, doomed potency of Annie Ernaux's \u003ci\u003eA Simple Passion\u003c\/i\u003e with the scale and force of \u003ci\u003eAnna Karenina\u003c\/i\u003e. It asks, can passion be mistaken for love? And proceeds to document the destruction a decade defined by such a misconstruction can yield on a life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eVigdis Hjorth\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of over a dozen prize-winning and best-selling novels. Will and Testament sold 170,000 copies in Norway and has received several awards, including the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Norwegian Booksellers' Prize, as well as being nominated for the National Book Award and Nordic Council Literature Prize. \u003ci\u003eLong Live the Post Horn!\u003c\/i\u003e won the Believer Book Award for fiction in 2020, and \u003ci\u003eIs Mother Dead\u003c\/i\u003e was listed for the International Booker Prize in 2023.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Verso Fiction","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50878346854674,"sku":"9781839768880","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_62337576-4b94-45cd-a878-e831280a97ab.jpg?v=1738294291","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/if-only-9781839768880","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}