The Summer Without Men

After Mia Fredricksen's husband of thirty years asks for a pause—so he can indulge his infatuation with a young French colleague—she cracks up (briefly), rages (deeply), then decamps to her prairie childhood home.

There, gradually, she is drawn into the lives of those around her: her mother's circle of feisty widows; the young woman next door; and the diabolical teenage girls in her poetry class. By the end of the summer without men, Mia knows what's worth fighting for—and on whose terms.

Provocative, mordant, and fiercely intelligent, this is a gloriously vivacious tragi-comedy about women and girls, love and marriage, and the age-old war between the sexes.

'Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer of high intelligence, profound sensuality and a less easily definable capacity for which the only word I can find is wisdom' Salman Rushdie

'One of our finest novelists' Oliver Sacks

'Reading a Hustvedt novel is like consuming the best of David Lynch' Financial Times

'Few contemporary writers are as satisfying and stimulating to read as Siri Hustvedt' Washington Post