$35.00 AUD

‘At the heart of Svensson’s tumultuous epic lies a perennial query: Are our lives simply random intersections of space and time, or are they part of a grand master plan of the universe, where we are all but cosmic marionettes and nothing is coincidence?’

The New York Times

A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding:
longlisted for the International Booker Prize

$35.00 AUD

A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding:
longlisted for the International Booker Prize

Overview

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

Are we free to create our own destinies or are we just part of a system beyond our control?

A joyful family saga about free will, forgiveness, and how we are all interconnected.

In October 1989, a set of triplets is born, and it is this moment their father chooses to reveal his affair. Pandemonium ensues.

Over two decades later, Sebastian is recruited to join a mysterious organisation, the London Institute of Cognitive Science, where he meets Laura Kadinsky, a patient whose inability to see the world in three dimensions is not the only thing about her that intrigues him. Meanwhile, Clara has travelled to Easter Island to join a doomsday cult, and the third triplet, Matilda, is in Sweden, trying to escape from the colour blue.

Then something happens that forces the triplets to reunite. Their mother calls with worrying news: their father has gone missing and she has something to tell them, a twenty-five-year secret that will change all their lives …

Details

Format
Paperback
Size
234mm x 153mm
Extent
544 pages
ISBN
9781925849936
RRP
AUD$35.00
Pub date
5 July 2022
Rights held
World English
Other rights
Norstedts Agency

Awards

  • Longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize
  • Shortlisted for the 2023 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation
  • Winner of the 2019 Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize
  • Winner of the 2019 Svenska Dagbladet’s Literature Prize
  • Shortlisted for the 2020 Tidningen Vi’s Literature Prize

Praise

‘Amanda Svensson’s raucous, sprawling debut takes on the enigmas of our origins, riddles of human consciousness and animal cognition, doomsday cults, and the most bedevilling of mysteries — the minds and choices of our closest intimates.'

Jury statement from the International Booker Prize 2023

‘This is a prismatic, hilarious, and deeply intelligent novel overflowing with wisdom about the complexities of being alive — I read it ravenously, and with pen in hand.’

Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
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About the Author

Amanda Svensson grew up in Malmö. She studied creative writing and has translated books by Ali Smith, Tessa Hadley, and Kristen Roupenian. A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding was awarded the Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize and the Svenska Dagbladet Literature Prize. It is shortlisted for Tidningen Vi’s Literature Prize.

more about the author 

Translator

Nichola Smalley is a translator of Swedish and Norwegian literature. Her translation of Andrzej Tichý’s novel Wretchedness won the 2021 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Bernard Shaw Prize that same year. She lives in London.

more about the translator