The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
Unquiet

Unquiet

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

'Linn Ullmann has written something of beauty and solace and truth. I don't know how she managed to sail across such dangerous waters' RACHEL CUSK

He is a renowned Swedish filmmaker and has a plan for everything. She is his daughter, by the actress he directed and once loved. Each summer of her childhood, the daughter visits the father at his remote Faro island home on the edge of the Baltic Sea.

Now that she's grown up - a writer, with children of her own - and he's in his eighties, they envision writing a book together, about old age, language, memory and loss. She will ask the questions. He will answer them. The tape recorder will record.

But it's winter now and old age has caught up with him in ways neither could have foreseen. And when the father is gone, only memories, images and words -- both remembered and recorded - remain. And from these the daughter begins to write her own story, in the pages which become this book.

Heart-breaking and spell-binding, Unquiet is a seamless blend of fiction and memoir in pursuit of elemental truths about how we live, love, lose and age.

© Linn Ullmann 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Reviews

  • Linn Ullmann has written something of beauty and solace and truth. I don't know how she managed to sail across such dangerous waters
    Rachel Cusk

About the author

Linn Ullmann

Linn Ullmann is the author of seven award-winning and critically-acclaimed novels. Her work has been published in 36 languages, and adapted for both stage and screen. Unquiet has received multiple awards, spent more than a year on the Scandinavian bestseller lists and was heralded as a modern classic in Norway. Girl, 1983 was the bestselling Norwegian novel in 2022, was awarded the Aschehoug Prize and was a nominee for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. In 2017 Ullmann received the Doubloug Prize from the Swedish Academy for her body of work. She lives in Oslo with her family.
Learn More

More from this Author

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more