A compelling mystery, a poignant bildungsroman, and a work of great nostalgia for times just past, COLLECTED WORKS is a novel about love, power and art-and what leads us to make the pivotal decisions that change the course of our lives.
Martin Berg's wife, Cecilia, disappeared years ago. His memories of their carefree college days seem ever out-of-reach, and the intellectual curiosities that once made him the object of her desire have given way to mid-life uncertainty. The methodical and quiet life he's made for himself and his adult children couldn't be further from the one he dreamed of in his youth, when the manuscripts lying around his apartment were flush with promise and the ailing publishing house he runs was still new. Perhaps nothing reminds Martin of these failures more than his friend Gustav Becker, a wildly successful painter who's returned to Gothenburg on the eve of his career-defining retrospective.
Gustav, meanwhile, is hurting too. His obsession with Cecilia's inexplicable disappearance had made his art hagiographic, fixated on her image. When posters for Gustav's retrospective plaster Cecilia's face on major billboards across the city, Martin's daughter Rakel learns a haunting fact that points toward her mother's whereabouts. She and her brother chase this clue across time, memory, and Europe, to discover why their beloved mother abandoned her family, with the imagined hope that the question of what makes a person can ever be answered.
COLLECTED WORKS, a major hit in Sweden, sold over 100,000 copies in its first year in print, instantly making Lydia Sandgren a literary sensation. Winner of the 2020 August Prize for Fiction, the novel is set to publish in 17 territories.
Autorentext
Lydia Sandgren is a trained psychologist and lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. Collected Works is her debut novel.
Klappentext
High Fidelity meets Where'd You Go Bernadette in this Swedish runaway best seller, a work of pure literary nostalgia for times just past.
Martin Berg, the intrepid owner of a small and ever-challenged independent publishing house, is in crisis. Following the disappearance of his wife, Cecilia Berg, he confronts his middle-aged existence and the reality of his loss. He begins to ponder what his "collected works" might consist of if he were a significant enough artist to deserve a retrospective: a retrospective that his childhood friend, the remarkable painter Gustav Becker is about to enjoy. Against this impending event, Martin must unpack his passionate love for his now-missing wife, his relationship with his two children and the unfinished manuscript he's been working on for years.
Rakel, Martin's twentysomething daughter, is reminded of her mother's absence everywhere she goes, thanks to Becker's newest installation: a series of billboards featuring images of his beloved muse, Cecilia. When Rakel finds a possible clue to her mother's fate, her world tilts on its axis.
Collected Works is Lydia Sandgren's debut novel and a global literary sensation. A family saga of several generations, Sandgren has crafted a page-turning story about enduring love, lifelong friendships, and art at the intersection of truth and fiction.