The Story of a Marriage

A short, intense, utterly compelling novel from Nordic Prize-nominated author Geir Gulliksen, Knausgaard’s editor in Norway. It’s a portrait of marriage and manhood that will provoke debate, introspection and passionate responses from readers

‘Brilliant and breathtaking…sexy and sad’ A.M. Homes

In his struggle to understand what has happened to his family, how his wife could fall in love with another man after twenty happy years, Jon attempts to tell the story of the painful collapse of his marriage, but from her point of view. He tries to get inside her head, to see it all as she did, all the while knowing that he can never really achieve this, and that his efforts reveal more projection than insight.

How can one truly know another person? How much of what we think is love, is just a construct? Is it possible to find - and maintain - the great love we long for? Gulliksen explores these questions, turning them over again and again till they crack, revealing hollowness - or possible new meanings.

Intense, erotic, dramatic, raw - Story of a Marriage examines two people’s inner lives with devastating and fearless honesty. It is a gripping but slippery narrative of obsession and deceit, of a couple striving for happiness and freedom and intimacy, but ultimately falling apart.