The Details

[A] miraculous sort of novelHernan Diaz

I wish I could write like thisFredrik Backman

So good that I kept underlining passages so I could reread them laterMark Haddon

Mesmerizing and hot to the touchTHE NEW YORK TIMES

Textured insights into human natureNEW YORKER

Wistfully recalls a time when what was lost stayed lostTHE TIMES

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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

A woozy, affecting dive into desire, domination and memory
FINANCIAL TIMES

An ode to the different kinds of love that form us . . . I wont forget this beautiful book
Jenna Clake

A fever dream . . . A feat of characterization, a triumph of lending language and profundity to observations of daily life
LITERARY HUB