24th ilb
5 – 14 Sep 2024 Program
9 – 18 Sep 2024 Young Program

Words of Love and Hate – Vigdis Hjorth: Er Mor Død [tr: Is Mother Dead]

Portrait Vigdis Hjorth
Vigdis Hjorth [© Agnete Brun]

»To mother is to murder, or close enough«, thinks recently widowed Johanna as she looks at the spelling of the two words in Norwegian. She is back in Oslo after a long absence, preparing for a retrospective of her art. Motherhood is thematically central, not necessarily to the delight of her aging mother, with whom she is going through violent upheavals. Hjorth was nominated for the prestigious Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2021 for her description of the cat-and-mouse game between the two.

Moderation: Elke Ranzinger
Speaker: Maike Rötzer
Language: Norwegian, German