WHB April Book Club: Will and Testament by Vigdis Hjorth

When Vigdis Hjorth published in her native Norway, its frank discussion of family secrets caused quite the controversy.

Find out why and experience the propulsive brilliance of queen Vigdis at Womb House Books.

When a dispute over her parents’ will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled twenty years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer houses to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. To outsiders, it is a quarrel about property and favoritism. But Bergljot, who has borne a horrible secret since childhood, understands the gesture as something very different—a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured.

Will and Testament is a lyrical meditation on trauma and memory, as well as a furious account of a woman’s struggle to survive and be believed. Vigdis Hjorth’s novel became a controversial literary sensation in Norway and has been translated into twenty languages.

Vigdis Hjorth 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. Long Live the Post Horn! won the Believer Book Award for fiction in 2020, and Is Mother Dead was listed for the International Booker Prize in 2023.

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