The Details

'[A] miraculous sort of novel' – Hernan Diaz

'I wish I could write like this' – Fredrik Backman

'So good that I kept underlining passages so I could reread them later' – Mark Haddon

'Mesmerizing and hot to the touch' – The New York Times

'Textured insights into human nature' – New Yorker

'Wistfully recalls a time when what was lost stayed lost' – The Times

A famous broadcaster writes a forgotten love letter; a friend abruptly disappears; a lover leaves something unexpected behind; a traumatised woman is consumed by her own anxiety.

In the throes of a high fever, a woman lies bedridden. Suddenly, she is struck with an urge to revisit a particular novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a message from an ex-girlfriend.

Pages from her past begin to flip, full of things she cannot forget and people who cannot be forgotten. Johanna, that same ex-girlfriend, now a famous TV host. Niki, the friend who disappeared all those years ago. Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Birgitte, whose elusive qualities shield a painful secret.

Who is the real subject of a portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? The Details is a novel built around four such portraits, unveiling the fragments of memory and experience that make up a life. In exhilarating, provocative prose, Ia Genberg reveals an intimate and powerful celebration of what it means to be human.

MORE PRAISE FOR THE DETAILS:

'A novel that, through its very bones, encapsulates one of the most important ideas of our current political moment - the necessity of connection, and our vulnerability to one other' – Susannah Dickey, author of Tennis Lessons

'A woozy, affecting dive into desire, domination and memory' – Financial Times

'An ode to the different kinds of love that form us . . . I won't forget this beautiful book' – Jenna Clake, author of Disturbance

'A fever dream . . . A feat of characterization, a triumph of lending language and profundity to observations of daily life' – Literary Hub